


these vignettes i sketch for you

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff, Pining, Supercorptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 35,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26748244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: a year or two (maybe a few) in the life of kara and lena in the month of supercorptober (or i try to connect every single prompt into one singular set of vignettes)
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 1299
Kudos: 1870





	1. fall

**Author's Note:**

> the plan is to add a chapter to this everyday, for the entire month, following the prompts by @kmsdraws - please do not quote me on this statement next week, in fact, do not even quote me on it tomorrow
> 
> anyway they'll all be around this length and by the end we should have one long, spooky boi. this sorry for any mistakes encompasses every random hour post to this story. okay - lets rock and roll kids

Kara had always loved fall. Ever since she came here and she first watched the leaves go brown. She’d panicked at first - thought everything was dying, that all the trees were going to disappear, that she’d arrived just in time to watch another world crumble. Alex had reassured her, taught her all about plants until Kara was obsessed, until her original dream was to be a botanist.

She liked the way the leaves reddened. The way, when light streamed through them, she could convince herself she was home, basking in the light of a red sun. She liked the way they crunched under her feet, how she had a sound to focus on when everything became too much.

She loved how, even now; fall transported her back to easier times. How it always made her feel more at ease, less like she had a full-time job and a city to protect weighing on her shoulders.

(She knew someone else who could use a little bit of that).

(Someone else who was terrible at giving themselves a little bit of that without immense guilt).

She catches Lena outside her apartment building as she tries to sneak into work on a Saturday. Or well, she doesn’t sneak, but that’s how Kara imagines it as she ignores her best friend’s texts that say ‘don’t you dare go into the office today’, slips on her highest heels and walks out her front door to hail a cab (because she seemed to believe everyone should have a weekend but her).

“Going anywhere nice?” Kara asks as she pushes off the wall. She laughs when Lena startles and hits her with a glare, hand on her chest, attempting to regulate her breathing.

“Jesus, Kara! You can’t sneak up on people like that.”

“There was exactly zero sneaking involved. You’d have seen me clear as day if you stopped working for more than five minutes.”

“I have-“

“An incredibly important launch next week. I know.” Kara smiles, taking Lena’s phone from her hand. She releases it surprisingly easy. Maybe thinking of the last time Alex and Kara fought over the remote at movie night and it snapped straight through the middle. Kara drops it into Lena’s bag. “I also know that you’ve already triple checked all of your plans and that they’re perfect, and also that any imperfections can wait until Monday.”

“We both know you’ll attempt to distract me then too.”

“Probably.” Kara grins cheekily. Lena rolls her eyes but there’s none of the usual disdain that Kara knows from when Lena’s rolling her eyes at other people to Kara, like she knew Kara would always be on her side. She wasn’t wrong.

“Let me change,” Lena says, resigned and clearly taking in Kara’s own clothing. Kara grins happily, adjusting her glasses and shooing Lena so she’ll go faster.

It doesn’t take long at all for Lena to return in a soft grey cable knit sweater that Kara thinks might have graced her own wardrobe once, paired with painted on black jeans, ankle boots and a red scarf that Kara thinks Lena must have bought the same day as her favourite shade of lipstick.

She looks snuggly and adorable.

It’s unfair.

“Ready?” She asks when she remembers what words are and how she’s supposed to use them around people.

“As I’ll ever be considering you’ve told me nothing of what we’re doing.”

Kara lifts the basket she has. “Picnic.”

“Some of us feel the cold, Kara.” Kara knew that much. She’d permanently turned up the temperature in her apartment so it would appeal more to Lena. She’d left out more blankets on her couch. She made Lena hot tea even when she said no because she knew she really meant yes, knew she liked to hold it in her hands to remedy her terrible circulation.

Sometimes, when Kara's feeling bold, she just holds them with her own - cups them and blows hot air onto them like Eliza always used to do for Alex when they were little.

(It always makes Lena blush. Kara likes the colour).

“That’s why I brought blankets. Come on, I’m gonna take you to my favourite up and coming spot in the park – it’s pretty exclusive.” It was a little out of the way. Peaceful in an already peaceful place.

Kara went there to clear her mind before publishing an important piece. She went there before she finally built the courage to tell Lena about her super-secret. She went there when Lena was angry, when she thought about what Lena was really saying, what she had done, when Lena apologised. She’d spent a lot of time there thinking about Lena.

(She’d spent a lot of time most places thinking about Lena).

“Do you have wine in that basket?”

Red and white, just to be sure. Both the same as the empty bottles from last game night. She knew they weren’t as expensive as Lena’s usual bottles. She knew that Lena knew her enough to not make the mistake of leaving fancy ones around for days like today. Days when she told Kara expensive was something she bought out of habit, but that everything was better with Kara around, even own brand boxed wine.

“With glasses. Only the best for Saturday Lena.” Saturday Lena was one of Kara’s favourite Lena’s. Rare but warm. She started off stiff, ever ready to reach for her phone when it buzzed. But slowly, gradually, she chilled out. Made carefree jokes and laughed at Kara being stupid and smiled a little like Kara imagined she would always smile if life hadn’t been so unkind to her.

For Kara, Saturday Lena could only be beaten by sleep Lena.

But that was a daydream for another day.

“Consider me convinced. Lead the way.”

“You’re going to love it.” Kara grabs Lena’s hand with her spare one on instinct. She freaks out about it when she realises five minutes later but Lena shows no real signs of questioning. She holds Kara’s hand and the conversation as they work on autopilot.

Kara really loves fall. She loves the leaves. She loves the gentle lowering of temperatures and the soft jumpers. She loves the new latte flavours and spices in her favourite cakes. She loves long nights and the colours that bloom in the day.

Kara loves fall.

She thinks she might love Lena in fall even more.


	2. baking

“It has to be perfect.”

“Kara. It’s a cake. Made by you. It could taste like the non-existent dirt on her Louboutins and Lena would still act like you were more talented than Michelin star chefs.”

“I don’t want her to have to act; I want it to taste nice.” This was her third attempt. She’d stupidly put salt instead of sugar in the first. She’d left the second in the oven a little too long (and by a little she means she heard people screaming fire across the city and only got back to her own apartment in time to narrowly avoid starting her own).

She’d called Alex then, to keep an eye on her and all her devices. Which brought her to the third cake. They’d cut into the test one. Alex had taken a second to respond when she asked how it was, which meant it was disgusting but Alex recognised the situation really wasn’t calling for honesty and was kindly re-evaluating.

Kara needs to make another one.

“It’s just a birthday, Kara.” For anyone else sure. But this was Lena.

“A birthday that she asked to spend with me, Alex. Do you know how big a deal this is? This isn’t accidental plans on the day where she pretends the present I got her was just a random gift, this is an _actual plan_.” It had taken a year for Lena to admit to Kara when her birthday was, and she only did because Jack Spheer had sent her a massive balloon like he knew it would annoy her but Lena had sighed away Kara’s excitement at finding out.

She’d essentially banned all talk of birthdays after that. All but told Kara to never speak of it, to never breathe a word to anyone else, to never make the big deal of it that she clearly wanted to. But now this. And, yes, she just asked if they could have movie night on her birthday, but she said the words ‘on my birthday’ and then gave Kara this look, and she knew this was something new.

And now her cake sucked.

“I brought packet mix?” Alex hedges, pulling it out her bag. Clearly, she had no faith in Kara’s abilities under pressure. Kara decides this once she won’t be offended.

“Hand it over."

Alex pushes it across the kitchen island. “Excellent choice.”

It’s ready not too long later. Covered in haphazardly smudged icing and decorations that Kara thinks scream homemade. Alex is pulling a face at it which she thinks means it probably looks as perfect as it can be. Kara relaxes, drops her head to the kitchen counter and stares up at Alex.

“Why am I so useless?”

“Being in love with your best friend will do that,” Alex says like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like it hadn’t taken Kara years to say it to Alex in the first place. “Do you remember when Winn invited you round for dinner and he made a three course meal? The fact that you didn’t notice he was in love with you is hilarious.”

“Shut up.”

“He lit candles,” Alex laughs. “Oh my God, he made you a mix tape.” She laughs harder and, okay, so maybe Kara had been a little blind to that one, but she’d just never considered it until he was trying to kiss her, and she was freaking out.

She didn’t want to be that friend. That friend who always had ulterior motives, no matter how well intentioned. This was a friendship cake. A first real birthday celebration cake. Shared by friends.

“You’re going to have to let him live that down at some point.”

“He lives in the future where I’m dead. He’s had enough time away from my jokes.” A knock sounds on the door. “That’s my cue,” Alex says, grabbing her bag and walking over to open the door for Lena.

“Hi, Alex,” Lena greets, hiding her shock at finding someone other than Kara a lot better than the first time she knocked on Kara’s door.

“Hi, not birthday girl, Lena,” she says and pulls a bottle of scotch from her bag, hands it over. ”Happy not birthday.” She squeezes Lena’s arm, waves her goodbye to Kara and then gracefully ducks out with a wiggle of her eyebrows behind Lena’s back as the door closes. She really was as much of a dork as she was cool.

“I swear I didn’t tell her when your birthday was. She already knew when she came to help me with the cake. I didn’t even call it a birthday cake at first, just a-“

“It’s fine, Kara. You can breathe.”

“It’s fine?”

“Yeah I’m trying to be less… weird about this whole thing.”

“It’s not weird to want your boundaries respected, Lena.”

“Well then I’m trying to have less boundaries and this is pretty good stuff.” She lifts the bottle. Lena steps closer to the counter to put it down. Kara opens her arms and smiles when Lena steps into them without question.

“Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you.” They linger a little longer than necessary in the hug. Kara feels an insane sense of loss when they do let go. “This looks delicious,” Lena says, taking in the cake on the side. That was kind. It looks like Kara made it using superspeed which is to say Kara definitely cut some corners in her time crunch panic.

“It’s from a box!” She doesn’t know why she’s admitting that. Lena’s just kind of close and smelling nice and her nerves are still running a little wild. She just wants it to go well. She doesn’t want to be another person in a long line that let Lena down on a day that was supposed to be all about her.

“It is?” Kara nods. “When I was a kid I always wanted this kind of cake. The Luthors were always unnecessarily grand – always with the kind of cake that’s more about looking at it, than actually enjoying.” Lena dips her finger in the icing and sucks it off. Smiles. “It’s perfect.”

Kara unclenches after that. She pulls out the party hats she didn’t think Lena would want, and the streamers she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to hang, and sings Lena happy birthday purposefully off key to make the experience more realistic. She gives Lena a lifetime of imperfectly perfect birthday experiences.

(The cake is a little dry.

Lena eats it with the brightest smile anyway).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look who managed to get to day two - let's celebrate that


	3. dancing

It’s midnight. She’s thinking too much.

She’s sort of always thinking too much. It’s gotten her into a lot of trouble in the past – her brain. Her brain that wouldn’t stop thinking about how to fix the problems in her brother’s inventions, the ones she never thought would be used for nefarious means until her hard word was indirectly killing people.

A brain that wouldn’t stop thinking about how to fix all the things she’d ever done wrong. A brain that decided everyone must be as evil and ready to betray as those who came before, and so tried to fit people’s actions into boxes that they definitely didn’t fit into. She'd cram them if she had to.

A brain that was full of boxes that were suddenly spilling out – wet cardboard and bowing woods and rusting metal - not a single one of them managing to withstand her current freak-out.

It’s midnight and Lena’s thinking too much.

Too much about something she’s not quite ready to put into words yet. Not even in her head. Not even to herself. She knows but she doesn’t dare _know_ just yet.

It’s midnight and she’s still in her office because she doesn’t want to put her heels back on, because she’d made herself comfortable in the glow of her desk lamp and on the softened leather of her couch that had been perfectly worn in since she met Kara. When she thinks about it, her whole office seemed softer since Kara.

She had pictures of people in frames instead of abstract art. A constant cycle of flowers filled vases to lighten up the room. She had a diary Kara bought her on her desk and the scotch Alex gave her for her birthday on the cabinet. A scarf Nia knitted hung on a hook. A patchwork of gifts and thoughtfulness. It looked like she had friends, it looked like she had family.

It was nice. The world she built with Kara. From Kara. By Kara.

Her speaker is softly playing music around the office. She sips on her drink as a new song filters in. It’s one she remembers dancing to with her mother when she was young. Although, dancing may have been a bold word, it was more like swaying around the room, jumping and being swung around in her mother’s arms. Wild and free. She missed that sense of freedom.

Lena pushes herself out of her chair, lets herself follow that same freedom of movement around her office. She’s halfway through the song when Kara pops her head in with a grin; Lena notices her with a start but doesn’t stop fully in her movements.

“What are you doing?”

“Dancing. My mother used to do it with me when I couldn’t sleep. It’s calming.”

“Okay,” Kara says simply and then she swoops in, grabs Lena in a faux ballroom hold and starts to sway with her. Laughter bubbles out of Lena, but it doesn’t deter Kara in the slightest.

(This was what boxes couldn’t contain. The warmth of Kara’s hands and the lightness of her body and feet, the beauty of her smile and the way her touch sank into Lena’s skin, sneaking under layers and layers that she wouldn’t be able to shed for weeks).

“What are you doing here?” Lena asks when Kara drops her into a dip because she needs something else to do with her mouth besides what she really wants.

“Taking you home.”

“I have a driver you know.”

“I do. I also know it’s his daughter’s birthday so you sent him home hours ago and I saw the shoes you were wearing today. You deserve a first class ride home.”

Lena cocks a brow. “First class, huh?”

“Oh yeah, have you seen these arms?” Kara flexes still holding Lena. She feels them tighten against her and holy shit this wasn’t fair. This was like slow torture. But also, had she seen them? Had she _seen_ them? Of course, she bloody had. She saw them the first day she met Kara in her pastel sweater. The day Kara saved her life (and she meant Kara, not Supergirl).

“You’re getting very big headed since that Most Eligible Bachelorette article came out,” Lena jokes. It was dumb and a little offensive and stupid but Lena still landed in second place so it was also maybe a little bit valid because of the validation it offered – if she needed validation from some second rate National City online newspaper that is.

“Lucky I have these strapping shoulders to hold it up.” Kara grins, looking like a puppy all proud of itself and admittedly she does have very strapping shoulders - the article certainly hadn’t lied with any of its Supergirl compliments (though it may have been a little over the top for a website that didn’t ask for age confirmation).

“You’re such a dork.”

“Well then prepare to fly Dork Express. Boarding is in one minute.” Lena laughs but pulls out of Kara’s arms to grab her things anyway, turning off the music and swinging her bag onto Kara’s shoulder when she holds her arm out expectantly.

This was a dance they were used to. Lena steps back into her arms and tucks her head into Kara’s chest so she can’t accidentally look down when Kara tells her not to like she always does, no matter how many times they’ve done this. Lena’s not so scared any more. She trusts Kara more than any plane, even her own.

Kara puts her down gently on her apartment balcony, gesturing with her finger to emphasise her soft but pointed tone. “Go to sleep. I don’t want to catch you dancing in your bedroom at two in the morning.”

“You look through my window at night? Little creepy, Kara.”

“I- you- shut up!” Lena laughs. “Lunch tomorrow? I really missed you today when I got called away.” Missed her. She missed her. Lena missed her too. She felt like a star-crossed lover staring out her window and hoping Kara might resolve the issue quicker than she thought and show up with sushi or pizza or anything. She absolutely wasn’t sad for an hour when it didn’t happen.

“Lunch sounds good.” Kara grins and nods. Lena can’t wait until tomorrow. “Good night, Kara.”

“Night, Lena.”

Lena falls asleep easy enough. In her dreams she sways in Kara’s arms.

(She’s still not saying the words).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if this were it's own fic, the title would be a lyric from dancing on my own: fact


	4. dog

“Kara what is that?”

“It’s a dog.” That was surely half a lie. It looked like a polar bear. All white fur and massive paws that made even Kara look small in comparison; actually made it look like she was struggling to keep him close to her side, but that couldn’t be possible. The girl of steel couldn’t be pulled over by a puppy; Lena knows she could get a polar bear to stick to her heel without even breaking a sweat.

“Perhaps I should rephrase - what are you doing with a huge dog in my incredibly fragile office?” Lena’s office was all glass decanters and glass coffee tables and expensive laptops and large floor to ceiling windows and yes, she could replace anything that was broken with no thought to her bank account, but that didn’t mean she wanted the effort of doing that. If that dog broke the World’s Greatest CEO mug Kara got her as a joke, there would be hell to pay.

“Don’t worry, Krypto is a good boy. I’m just watching him for Clark for a few hours whilst he sorts out some… work things.”

“Clark Kent named his dog Krypto? Is he even trying to keep his identity a secret?”

“Like you can talk,” Kara scoffs and it’s a testament to how far they’ve come that Lena doesn’t feel the twinge she used to at those words. The one that screamed she doesn’t trust you; she doesn’t care enough; you don’t mean anything to anyone. Now she’s just gently offended because maybe she didn’t notice but she was also a little blindsided with the magnanimity of Kara Danvers to be thinking about secret identities.

And frankly Lena resents it because if she’d spent as much time with Clark Kent as she had Kara Danvers, she would’ve figured it out in seconds. It would’ve been so easy to see past his geeky mistakes when she didn’t really care for his chiselled jaw or muscled arms or cute black framed glasses and pink cardigans and the scar between her, _his_ , eyebrows.

Unluckily for them all Lex had kept Clark to himself when they were friends – Lena used to tease him about it back when things felt okay, back before Lex decided if anyone deserved power it was him. Back when he was just a scrawny rich kid playing with the ever-growing farm boy with the bright blue eyes.

Kara pats Krypto on the head fondly. “And anyway, Krypto is actually like the third most common name for a dog in the US these days. I looked it up when I teased Clark about the exact same thing.”

“Of course you looked it up.” Krypto sits by Kara’s side obediently, tail wagging aggressively and it’s not helping the ‘Kara Danvers is as cute as a puppy’ vibe when the two of them are standing side by side, Kara’s shirt matching the blue of his collar. Lena knows that must have been on purpose.

“You have to admit he’s cute.” Kara leans down and aims his face at Lena, sending her own puppy dog eyes her way and she was going to give in. She had no choice.

“He is rather handsome I suppose.” Lena rounds the table, leans down to pet him - his tail waggles a little more aggressively. It slams into the floor and… cracks a tile. She doesn’t stop scratching behind his ear as she looks up at Kara with a cocked eyebrow.

“He may actually be from Krypton?” Kara looks guilty; stepping over the crack as if that made Lena forget it was ever there. Lena stifles a smile at the sight of her looking like a kid in a candy store who toppled over a vat of sherbet.

“Perhaps we should take your superpowered nephew into a more open space.” Before something Lena cared more about ended up smashed from excitement. She didn’t need a remake of the time Kara found her favourite film was on TV at Lena’s apartment and crushed the remote in her hand at the same time she bounced so hard the legs on her couch cracked under the pressure.

Lena had forgiven her the second she twisted her face into a grimace and shrugged as if to say well it was bound to happen eventually.

(Lena might have hoped the eventually wouldn’t be quite so innocent).

“That sounds like a good idea,” Kara agrees. Lena grabs her coat and Krypto’s tails goes wild again. She cringes at the sound of it smashing into a cupboard. She turns back around and finds a door hanging off by a single hinge. “I’ll forward the bill to Clark. I hear they pay far better at the Daily Planet.”

“Come on, troublemakers.”

Kara scoffs but she follows Lena out the office as she nods to Jess and asks her to field any calls for an hour or so. “I’ll have you know we’re trouble-enders. Krypto here took down three bad guys single-handedly at an armed robbery this morning.”

“Clearly the most pup-standing citizen around here.”

Kara gasps. “Lena was that a pun?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lena plays dumb.

“You did!” Kara gets her phone out with her other hand, handling Krypto with relative ease now he could clearly sense he was getting what he wanted. “I’m putting this in my calendar. This is a national holiday now.”

Lena laughs. “You can’t keep claiming everything as a holiday, Kara.” Last week Lena had confessed to Kara she could juggle, had shown her with limes. Kara marked it excitedly on the calendar that hangs on her fridge. She doesn’t even want to think about how that’ll be celebrated next year.

She wonders if Kara does this for everyone. If it stems from when she first came here and everything was so new, so exciting. If the exact reverse was true, if it stemmed from needing to make everything seem more exciting than it was so that every felt a little less dull, a little less sad, a little less bleak. How could you miss your home when you were finding the joy in every little thing?

“I absolutely can and will.”

“Not to rain on your parade, but Krypto seems to have brought a _gift_ to the celebration.”

“Oh, buddy, I thought we agreed you’d leave those for Clark,” Kara moans but the smile never leaves her face.

Lena watches her play fetch with Krypto with far more attention than she should ever really pay such a tedious activity. Kara spends the time making sure no one is watching her before launching it far beyond human power. She gets Lena to throw it a few times, laughs when it goes nowhere and wraps herself around Lena’s back to help her throw it further.

It feels domestic.

Lena finds herself a little sad when Krypto goes back to Metropolis.

(Even when her office and apartment sigh in relief).


	5. family

Winn’s back. Lena doesn’t know how long for, but she knows she’s missed him. Missed his dorkiness and his stupid jokes and the way he always seems a little bit star-struck by her. It was nice to have that sometimes. She liked that she could tell he truly understood her. He knew what it was like to come from a family where people have preconceptions about you because of someone else’s actions, knew what it was like to want to be free of that, to make your own name.

Winn’s back and all Lena can think is that he wasn’t living across the country, or even across the world, he was living in the future.

Lena thought she might care about how the world had changed. She thought she’d care about new avenues of science and new inventions and a better, safer world. She thought she might care about L-Corp. About her family name. And she does, to a degree, but it’s not the biggest answer sitting on the tip of her tongue.

“So, the future-“

He cuts in, “I really didn’t think you’d be the first to ask.”

“Kara?” Lena asks because if she was going to bet money that’s where she’d place it. Kara had dragged her to the pier just the other week to use the fortune teller, it was kind of creepy and old but Kara had a pocket full of coins and a smile full of hope, so Lena had gone along with it. The fortune was pretty bogus. Beating Kara at table hockey was great though, as was the way Kara had presented the prize she picked with the tokens to Lena like an award.

It had felt a little like a date.

If it were anyone other than Kara, she would’ve kissed them.

Sometimes she lays awake at night wondering if that was her one chance to do it and she’d just watched it dissolve like cotton candy in water.

“Kara,” he confirms. “She’s practically been vibrating since I came back. I don’t know why. She was so calm about it all last time and it’s not like she doesn’t have Brainy to hound.” That was true. But what was also true was that brainy was all serious about the timeline and rules and being sensible with statistics and probabilities and outcomes and Winn was an easy nut to crack. Winn could be turned with a well-timed threat, a promise of something nerdy, or just in the name of feelings and friendship. It was like approaching a care bear vs a grizzly bear.

“I don’t need you to tell me anything big. I just- I know where you’re from, I’m long gone, but- do you know if I was happy? At the end? Does it stay like this?” Does she keep Kara? Do the people who really matter still trust her? Do the attempts on her life calm down now that Lex was dealt with once again? Does she feel as close to whole as she does now?

“That’s all you want to know? Not if you make the next billion or change the world, just… if you’re happy?” He asks, bewildered.

“Don’t tell my investors,” Lena jokes but it falls flat against her nerves.

“Things change-“ Lena’s heart drops but Winn continues- “Things always change. But, from what I can tell, in the end, you must’ve been pretty happy. It wasn’t what I expected when I looked you all up but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.”

“Do I have a family?” She rushes out.

Winn blinks, startled, but his answer is almost instantaneous. Unrehearsed and real. “You have a family right now, Lena. They’re a little dysfunctional but they’re yours.” It hits Lena straight in the gut. He’s right, when she thinks about it. Not all families were so clear cut.

Sometimes the one’s you’re given are lost before you can ever think to cherish them. Sometimes you’re thrown into an environment meant to test your strength. Sometimes people take you for granted. Sometimes people break you down and sometimes you stumble on something amazing.

Some families are your super-powered best friend and her sister who looks out for you like her own. Some are a mother who is trying for once and another mother who perfected the art of taking a broken child under her wing.

Some are built with your weird best friend from the future who asks you for advice like he can’t comprehend why you aren’t the one to go to, like he knows something more about you than you know yourself. Some are made of a girl who dreams, and a woman who always knows just what to say like it might actually be her job to help people through tough times.

Sometimes the family you find is the one you need.

Sometimes a family finds you.

“Thanks, Winn.”

“You do though, have the other kind of family, and in every picture you’re smiling.” Lena laughs, a stupid relieved laugh that bursts out of her and she doesn’t know anything at all, but she also knows everything. Winn grins at the outburst until he’s laughing like he doesn’t even know why but also doesn’t know how to stop it.

Kara walks in on the sight with a wide, albeit confused, grin on her face. “What’re you two laughing at so hard?”

“Winn just told a really good joke.”

“You wouldn’t get it,” Winn says, just to get a rise out of Kara. He succeeds immediately as she scoffs and steps between him and Lena. Puts her back to him to shut him out. Lena’s still feeling the tremors of her laughter in her chest.

“Would you like to go to lunch, Lena? I was going to ask Winn but he’s being a jerk.”

“I’d love to.” Kara grins and turns to stick her tongue out to Winn. Lena mouths she’ll bring him something back and he smiles. She really does miss him sometimes. But Lena wouldn’t say no to lunch alone with Kara. Especially not when she rattles on about what’s been going on in her week, a story she’s working on, an idea she had about their latest big bad problem and the pastry she ate for breakfast that morning even as Alex watched her with judgemental eyes.

Lena could listen to her all day as she talks and jokes and makes Lena talk and joke and puts way too much food in her mouth at once. (She’s stupidly charming).

There are paparazzi photos of them the next day - Lena laughing as she wipes sauce from Kara’s chin - and all she can think is that she looks happy.

She doesn’t let herself think much more than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day five, we're still alive


	6. warm

She’s powerless. Not in the metaphorical, 'I can’t overcome these barriers' way, but in the genuine she solar flared and is walking around like any other human with a miniaturised yellow sun in the pocket of her jacket way.

She’s powerless but mostly just glad she doesn’t have to lay under sun lamps for hours on end. Kara had only just finished groaning at Alex’s demands when Lena had appeared and said she’d designed something to help. Something handheld and portable but packing more power than the usual setup. Kara felt her heart clench at the thoughtfulness - it had only been last week that she'd confessed she hated sitting under the lamps after a mission. Kara had jumped at the chance to try it, could feel it melting into her bones, and fizzling under her skin.

Sitting powerless under the yellow sun always felt a little like when she first landed. When the sun kissed her skin in a gentle hello and said hey you, I’ve been waiting for you, I choose you. She liked having the chance to meet it again. To feel like she was still being chosen. She once asked Clark if he felt the same way. But he had never worshipped the red sun. Had never seen it as anything more than the thing that brought the day.

Meeting Lena had felt a little like meeting the sun. Kara’s heart had stumbled, tripped over her aorta and spilled itself into her chest, gasping for breath. She’d called it fear at the time, mixed with the excitement of finding the path meant for her, of finding her calling. And it had been about finding. But she’d found something else entirely, something that made her heart say: stop... just so that it could take a moment to gently wave at Lena and say, I’ve been waiting for you, I choose you.

Kara supposes that’s why, in her daydreaming, her feet take her right outside Lena’s apartment building. It’s why she nods her way to George on the door instead of turning her direction towards her own apartment. It’s why she presses her thumbprint onto Lena’s private elevator instead of heading for her own pile of blankets and fluffy socks to shield in.

It’s why her shoulders push back, why her body extends, why her chest puffs and her hands itch to rest on her hips when Lena opens the door with her glasses perched on her face and a sweater with too long sleeves dripping from her body, because Lena was like the sun and Kara couldn’t fight the feeling of being a cat on a warm balcony.

“Bored already without your powers?”

“I couldn’t get warm,” Kara admits. Lena shuffles out of the doorway and pulls her inside, pushes her down on the couch and shuffles ever so across the room.

“I’ll get the fireplace going.” She gets quickly into the task of fixing it. The same way Lena always approaches a problem - eyes forward and head stuck in. It’s kind of adorable, the tunnel vision she adopts.

She turns on the fire and rushes to get blankets and a jumper to replace Kara’s jacket. Kara promptly slips it on. It smells like Lena. Expensive perfume and slow roasted coffee beans and a little like lab steriliser. It’s perfect. She snuggles into it as Lena settles a blanket on her lap, nodding to herself like she’s mentally checking things off a list.

She disappears again, returning with two mugs of tea as she drops onto the sofa beside Kara, handing her a mug and using her then free hand to tuck her in a little. Kara feels her entire body fill with warmth completely unrelated to the scolding tea she sips far too early (forgetting she can actually burn her tongue for once).

“Better?” Lena asks.

“Much. Thank you.” Kara remembers to blow on her tea this time before taking a timid sip, sighing in happiness that it’s her favourite kind. Lena always kept it stocked up even though Kara knows she doesn’t like it herself. Lena does plenty of things like that. Keeps snacks for Kara and records shows she knows Kara likes and picks restaurants that are Kara’s favourite cuisine and quietly cares.

She’s the kind of friend Kara had always hoped for when she first came to Earth, and everyone called her a freak. (Who could really blame her for falling for her?)

“Is the yellow sun device working?”

“Oh yeah, I feel stronger already.” Kara does semi bicep curls with the mug until she spills some on her lap and abruptly stops, swiping at the blanket with her hand and sending an apologetic look Lena’s way, making a big show of placing her mug back on the coffee table.

“Maybe it’ll strengthen your brain too.”

“Don’t be mean to me when I’m at my most fragile.”

“You’re right. You’re the smartest person I know – smart enough to know how to answer questions incorrectly about things you don’t want people to think you understand.”

“Excuse you; I have never pretended in my life.” Lena stares at her until it clicks. “Except for the obvious.” Kara pauses. “And the time I told William I was washing my hair when I’d really washed it that morning so we didn’t have to hang out.”

“Okay, keep your secrets, but I will catch you out when you’re half asleep and answer my questions on quantum mechanics without thought.”

“You truly _are_ evil, Lena Luthor.”

“It’s in the blood.” Lena’s mouth curves into a teasing grin. It feels different without her usual war paint. Her lips are a soft pink. The smile curves a little more crooked, a little less perfectly crafted. Her eyes glisten, they crinkle at the edges. Her dimples peek out and give their own smiles on her cheeks. Kara feels a shiver trickle down her spine. “Are you still cold?”

“A little,” Kara lies. She doesn’t even feel bad about it when Lena timidly opens her arms and invites her into them. It’s a reverse of their usual positions but Kara thinks she needed this. To be held. To feel comforted and sheltered. She missed that usually when she was lying under a machine and listening to it beep. There were far more soothing rhythms to listen to right here.

Slightly abnormal rhythms. “Your heart’s beating really fast.”

Another tick. “I was worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know. It’s just I think we all get a little used to believing you’re indestructible, that your power is infallible, and then something like this happens and we’re reminded your blood is just as red as the rest of us, your bones just as light, your skin just as thin.” Lena runs her fingers along the skin of Kara’s hands in gentle brushes, follows the veins of her hands more pointedly.

“You won’t have to worry in a day or two.”

“I always worry a little. You’re a bit like a bull in china shop when it comes to trouble – always smacking into things that didn’t need to concern you.” Kara makes a noise of protest. Feels Lena’s gentle laughter against her cheek. “It’s not a bad thing. Not to me. I like that you care about everyone – it’s why you bothered to keep pushing at my barriers until I let you in.”

“Thank you for letting me in.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And thank you for the pizza we’re going to order and that you’re going to refuse to let me pay for.” Lena laughs, rolling her eyes but slipping her phone from her pocket and placing the order anyway.

They spend the evening with Kara resting on Lena’s chest, eating pizza and with Kara desperately trying to ignore the crumbs on Lena’s chest that she shouldn’t brush off but also can’t stop thinking about brushing off. They watch bad movies and slip in and out of sleep and Kara has never felt warmth like it.

She feels the lack of heat for days afterwards.


	7. yellow

Lena likes to think of her life in colours. She pictures periods in her life stained by vibrant hues and dull shades. Bright moments, pastel people, mellow events and everything in between.

She thinks her life started green. The green of her mother’s eyes and the green fields that flowed like waves beneath the horizon. The green stains on the knees of her tights and her favourite green plasters when stains turned to cuts. Green meant home. It meant comfort and protection and the familiar scent of the mint her mother kept on the windowsill, forever reminding her that mint shouldn’t be left unattended in a garden or it’ll choke out the herbs around it.

(Lena thought she was a lot like mint when she watched her mother disappear beneath green waves that had long lost their sharp blue).

Her first few years at the Luthor’s were pink. The pink of the backpack Lionel put in her hands and told her to fill with what was most important to her. The pink of the bedroom he’d painted. The pink of the bike he bought and the hair scrunchie he asked if she knew how to put her hair up with, and the smile he gave her with a little too much gum.

The pink of a man who was trying to be the father of a girl without a mother. The pink of a man who had barely paid attention to his son but somehow decided she was worthy of more. The pink of Lillian’s cheeks when he scolded her for being unkind – the pink that would always turn to red inside, the pink that drove them apart when he was trying to bring them together.

When she was nine, she stole Lionel’s card and bought blue paint. She spent hours cleanly painting her walls. It felt like a clean slate. He’d smiled gently when she showed him her work after he came back from a day longer than she’d hoped. She’d yawned herself far past her bedtime, but it felt worth it.

He died a week later. Blue felt about right then, not sad, but deep. Every little thing hitting ten times stronger. Deep like her grief that hit her like a tonne of bricks - like a Jenga tower already unstable from the last questionable pull finally falling.

Deep like her need for approval from Lex which only continued to multiply. She learned everything he knew so she could talk to him, so she could ask him questions, work with him, so she could be the ear he needed if he wanted one. He just seemed offended.

Deep like her first crush on the girl who lived across the road. The one who won the lottery and had money and loving parents, who made her cookies on her birthday that Lena’s favourite chef in the kitchen helped her hide from Lillian.

The blue of the first bruise Lex ever gave her from shoving her a little too hard into the side of a table. She remembers the panic in his eyes when he heard the crash. She remembers not reacting. She remembers how nice he was for days afterwards. She remembers sweeping it under the rug, justifying it, ignoring it.

Sometimes she wonders what might have happened if she told someone.

Sometimes she wonders how you tell what’s kids being kids and the making of someone like Lex.

Meeting Andrea was orange. Like the last spark of the sun at night. Like the colour of her favourite shirt that had been worn too many times and was starting to be full of holes.

She was orange like the fruit - a chameleon, in that one day she was a clementine, another a tangerine, a different one a mandarin. She had been taught to be strong but adaptable like Lena had. To shift herself ever so slightly to make people like her more but they liked each other for who they were – Lena valued that more than anything.

Lena felt like an orange in a juicer when Andrea chose her own wishes, her own cares, her own sanity over Lena's.

Jack Spheer had been purple. Regal and bold. He was wealth and grandeur. He was peace. She felt peaceful with him. They loved in a way that wasn’t the love people always expected from them. They loved the calm, they loved the partnership, they loved the chance to share their creative mind, to have the other person say nothing was too big, too impossible to be achieved together.

Lena left purple behind because she didn’t need peace. She needed revolution. She needed reinvention. She needed reinvigoration.

Kara Danvers was yellow.

She was yellow in all the stereotypical ways. She was fresh-faced and still excited by what life might bring her, made Lena want to be excited about what life could be instead of apprehensive about what was around the corner. She was happiness and positivity and bright – bright smiles and bright eyes and bright warmth.

Where Andrea was the sunset, Kara was the midday sun. She was the longest day of summer. The brave hours of light that creeped back in as winter turned to spring. She was luminous.

Kara Danvers was yellow in honour and loyalty. She defended Lena time and again. She believed in her when no one else did. Protected her even when they weren’t on the best of terms.

She was yellow in intellect. A vibrant brain on sharp shoulders, no matter how much time she spent pretending to be in the dark on Lena’s work, no matter how many misspellings she slipped into her articles to be corrected like she didn’t speak more languages than Lena had fingers to count.

She was yellow in deceit and cowardice. She hid behind a mask for years and Lena hadn’t seen it as she shielded her eyes from the light. Had missed the darkness of the solar eclipse because she was too busy closing her eyes and hoping she wouldn’t wake up.

She was yellow in her apologies. In the colour of the sponge she baked Lena. In the flowers she sent on the anniversary of her mother’s death. In the counter she always picked for their team at game night and the candy she always ate from the packet first, pushing the reds towards Lena subconsciously.

She was yellow in the sundress she was wearing to lunch. The one that made Lena’s breath catch in her throat as she stood up to greet Kara (also known as jumped up because she knew it meant Kara would wrap her in a tighter hug, one that tempted her feet to the leave the floor).

“You look nice,” Lena says when they part and Kara spins round once to show it off more fully. It feels like something from a movie.

“You look lovely too,” Kara counters and Lena’s suddenly not so bitter about the extra time she spent getting ready that morning in preparation. “As does this menu. I’m going to eat so many carbs – prepare to be impressed.” It’s stupid. Kara’s stupid. Lena’s feelings were stupid, and she wasn’t going to be vague anymore.

Kara Danvers was yellow.

And yellow was Lena’s favourite colour.

(She loves her).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's alternate title: these colours of feeling (give me love, i'll put my heart in it)


	8. beach

Lena never should’ve admitted it. She never should have looked Kara in the eye and admitted something so embarrassing, so personal, something so sure to end in this kind of response.

She hadn’t admitted it to someone in a long time. Not since the last time someone joked about it a little too much. Not since she realised it was a fact she could quite easily hide if she wanted to. Especially now Lex didn’t have a chance to use it against her in one of his death plots.

Now here it was, lingering between them like a fly that just didn’t get the hint, even when you opened every window for it to leave out of.

“You can’t swim? Like you _can’t swim_ or you can’t because you don’t _want_ to swim?”

“I literally can’t swim.”

“Because of your mother?” Kara asks softly and Lena doesn’t know why she ever questioned telling her, why she ever thought Kara wouldn’t be the first person to completely understand Lena’s fears.

She nods minutely. “For the longest time I’d convinced myself the currents were too strong. That, even being the strong swimmer she was, the water was too dangerous. By the time I realised what had really happened I could barely look at the water without seeing her sinking beneath it. Now it just feels a little too late and I don’t plan to spend my Saturdays in a community pool with five year olds, exposing my weaknesses to the National City press.”

“Well... are you willing to expose yourself to just one member of the reporting community?”

“I don’t think Nia would agree to teach me. She once told me she looks terrible in a swimming cap – it’s the one hat she just can’t pull off.”

Kara rolls her eyes and pushes Lena just enough to force her to right herself. “I meant me, you dork.” When she doesn’t get an immediate response, she keeps talking. “I know a secret beach that’s practically always empty and we could go really early or really late just to make absolutely sure no one sees us.”

“Okay,” Lena says timidly. Kara pierces her with a look that says, think about this, that says don’t just say this because you think that’s what I want, make sure that it’s what you want. A look that says, I can swim well enough for the both of us. It gives Lena hope, it gives her courage, it makes her want to look away, but she keeps her gaze straight ahead as she strongly repeats, “Okay.”

“Tomorrow then? I’ll come by at six.” Lena just nods because there’s nothing else she can say, nothing else she has pre-prepared in the word tank to avoid spewing something else out or sounding a little too afraid. Kara squeezes her arm gently before she disappears out the door of Lena’s apartment, making the exit she had meant to when Lena dropped her bombshell.

Lena’s ready to go an hour before she needs to be the next morning. She doesn’t sit with her thoughts for too long though because, about ten minutes into tapping her feet on the floor in front of her couch, and opening and closing her laptop in attempts to do work, and then quickly giving up and repeating, Kara shows up with a knock on her door and coffee in her hands.

“I could hear you mentally pacing from across town.”

“I’m just a little nervous.”

“Lena, we don’t have to do this. I offered because I thought you might want to. This is entirely on your terms. If you want to stop right now and spend the morning at the farmer’s market then we’ll shift the day immediately, no problem.”

“I want to go,” she says to Kara. “I want to go,” she repeats for herself. Kara nods and leads her back outside to the car she’s clearly borrowed from J’onn.

Lena’s quiet most of the ride as Kara sings under her breath and taps on the wheel, intermittently offering squeezes to Lena’s thigh before focusing both hands back on the wheel. Lena watches the buildings go by and forces her brain not to think. She thinks of nothing but the wind in her hair and the slight chill in the air and gentle thrum of the car beneath her feet.

It oddly works. And then the car comes to a stop and it all comes rushing to her. She gets out of the car and all she can think is _fuck_. Kara takes her hand and leads her onto the sand and all she can think is _fuck_. Kara is clearly saying something to her and all she can think is _fuck_.

“Breathe, Lena.” Kara’s staring at her. Kara who seems to now just be in a swimsuit and Lena’s _fuck_ is still relevant but for an entirely different reason because Kara looks amazing. A simple light blue one piece that hugs her curves, extenuates her muscles, leaves her strong thighs, broad shoulders and muscular arms free and, sure, her super-suit hugged every part of her perfectly, but it was different to see skin.

Oddly, seeing it puts all the breath back in Lena’s lungs. Like just seeing Kara clears her mind. Kara who wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Kara who woke up at the crack of dawn just to help Lena get over her fear. Kara who would do that for her every morning without question.

“Thank you. Got a little lost in my head there.”

“Always.”

“I’m just going to…” she trails off and gestures to her body before she realises that’s dumb and just pulls her shirt over her head. Kara looks away like she’s not going to see it all anyway. Kara looks pointedly in her eyes when she’s left in her own black swimsuit and then holds out her hand for Lena. Lena clasps it tightly - too tightly for anyone other than Kara but Kara doesn’t flinch.

Kara steps forward, takes another, Lena lets her arm stretch along with her as far as she can without having to move her feet. Kara laughs gently. “Okay we are going to have to walk a little bit, Lena.”

“Right.” She takes a step. Kara smiles. She steps a few more times just to see it widen until a cold wave crashes over her toes. “Shit.”

“You’re doing so well.” The compliment burns from Lena’s head to her toes until she can’t even feel how cold the water is, until it pushes her to take a few more steps, until it’s Lena leading the way and Kara following her. They’re up to their chests when Kara stops. Lena takes a deep breath.

“What now?”

“Now we either go back and get in the car or you can learn to float.”

“I think I’d like to learn.”

“Okay. Don’t freak out but I’m going to touch you, it’s not some unidentified aquatic animal.” Lena breathes a laugh out her nose but nods. “Here we go.” Kara warns again, putting her hands on Lena.

Maybe this was Kara’s best idea ever. Maybe having Kara’s hands on the bare skin of her thighs and lower back was everything she ever wanted and maybe it was totally worth the mortifying thought of finally being killed by a stray wave.

Kara tilts her until she’s practically lying on the water. Her ears slightly submerged, her eyes squinting up towards the lightening sky and Kara’s smile. It feels… kind of nice. Somehow the beach becomes even more quiet, like her stress is as muffled as the ambient sounds around her.

She doesn’t think about how alone the water usually makes her feel, how insignificant, how flawed. She just thinks about how Kara was there holding her up, making sure she was safe, making sure she was comfortable. And maybe she could overcome anything so long as Kara was by her side.

(Maybe that’s exactly why she couldn’t tell her that she loved her.

She couldn’t risk losing her).

After a while Kara’s hands leave her but Lena stays floating. Kara starts floating by her side, connects them by their hands as they lay there, taking in the clouds floating above them and the gradual warming of the air.

They leave when the waves begin to hasten. Kara wraps her in a towel and tells her how proud of her she is and it’s all Lena can hear ringing in her ears all day.

Lena agrees to go again next week.

She even finds herself looking forward to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can pry my lena can't swim headcanon from my cold, dead hands


	9. luthor

There’s a lot in a name.

They could mean a hundred different things, be given for a hundred different reasons, have a handful different origins. Kara came from a world where it was a way to honour where you came from, a way to show where you were in society, a way to show what your creed was, what you believed in, what kind of people you came from, what kind of skills could be expected of you.

She came from a place where it meant nearly everything.

Kara came from a family of leaders. The Zor-El name was supposed to mean law and order; it meant some of the greatest minds of Krypton. It meant unity and belief. It put expectations on her shoulders before she even really knew what expectation was and she met them all. Until there was no one to expect anything from her anymore.

Then she became a Danvers. She didn’t feel expectation then. Well, maybe the expectation to be human - at least outwardly. To fit in. To be a Danvers meant eating dinner as a family around the table, it meant doing chores and Eliza helping with homework - namely history and helping her decipher science names and symbols unlike her own.

Being a Danvers meant protection and love and understanding. It meant finally having a sister, a best friend. Someone who looked out for her and tried to understand her (when she wasn’t too busy mocking her for any reason under the sun, just for the chance to get even a little under her skin).

Being Supergirl meant something too. The title. The recognition. She wasn’t just some flying blur in a suit. People looked up to her. People owned things with her family crest on and called her name when they were scared. Some even prayed in their darkest moments hoping she might hear them.

It meant keeping up with unrealistic expectations. It meant people placed the weight of the world on her shoulders until shrugging became an ordeal, until she wasn’t allowed to be on the side of indifference, until people were asking her to speak on things, to have an opinion, to fight for what she believed in and to believe in the right things.

There’s a lot in a name.

Kara thinks a lot of people around her don’t understand that. Except Lena.

Lena was forced into a dynasty on the darkest day of her life. Her family grew and the love dwindled. She was a _Luthor_.

Kara knows what the name that meant at first. Power, influence, money and fame. It meant being the first people on an invite list and the people companies would jump into bed with without question. It meant being expected to be perfect, to be the highest achiever, to be a great mind and a leader.

Kara knows the pressure. Sometimes she’s not surprised Lex snapped. It wasn’t the place for someone with a weak mind.

Lena carried it with grace. Even when the name lost its status. When it became something dark and sullied, she stood tall beneath it. She carried the qualities she was supposed to, the ones she was taught and then she sprinkled in some genuine modesty, empathy and superhuman good looks.

But some people refused to see that.

Some people like the man who threw a rock at Lena’s head at a press conference. Alex had put him in cuffs before Kara even had a chance to debate whether to punch him into the ground or run to Lena. She’d have chosen Lena anyway. She would always choose to protect Lena. She knows what that means. Clark had laid it out in front of her in so many words once. That he wouldn’t choose the world over Lois. She knew the people she’d pick over anything. Over everything.

They’re in Lena’s apartment now because she refused to go to the hospital for a small cut on her head. Lena’s first aid kit is spread in front of them. Kara’s gently wiping the cut with rubbing alcohol; holding Lena’s chin gently with her other hand. She’s barely touching her. Her hands just skimming the skin. A guide not a force. She knows Lena’s looking at her, can feel her gaze, but she focuses steadfast on her task. She needs to focus right now.

“I’m fine, Kara.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your stoic silence is saying enough.” She reaches her own hand up to Kara’s face. Runs her thumb along her brow until it relaxes. Until Kara sighs and meets her gaze. She looks so tender. She looks so timid - like it was Kara hurt and not her.

“It’s not you. It’s just- I’m so angry? I thought maybe by now people would have taken their heads out and realised you’ve done nothing wrong since you’ve been here but instead they’re out here throwing vitriol and fucking rocks. _Rocks?_ ” Lena catches Kara’s hand, throws the cotton pad on the side and simply holds her hand. Looking at her seriously.

“Did you just swear?”

“That’s what you’re focusing on?”

“It was important to me.” Kara drops onto the seat beside her. Drops her head onto the counter just to feel the cold press against her head, to tame the heat she can feel behind her eyes. Lena drops her free hand onto the back of her neck. It calms her more, the smooth rhythm of her thumb brushing the baby hairs on the nape of her neck, blunt nails scratching across the skin.

“I wish they would leave you alone.”

“Being a Luthor has always meant expectation. I know you understand that. I used to let it get me down, I used to stop believing in myself, I used to let them talk me into a hole. Then I met you.” Kara timidly turns her head to see her. Lena’s smiling softly. “I don’t really care what they say about me Kara because they don’t know me. They know a name and a media perception. But you know me, you _know me_ , and you’re here being adorably angry and wiping blood out of my hair so I think that must mean I’m great in spite of my name.”

“I think you’re great because of it.” Lena had every reason in the world to stop trying. When it felt like you were never going to win it was easy to give up. It would have been so easy to be bad but Lena had stood up, dared to care, dared to challenge. She took the adversity and pushed herself to be better. Stared the judgement in the eye and stuck her middle finger up. It was wonderful. She was wonderful.

“Did you get all the blood?”

“You really should get checked.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Come on, I really fancy ice cream from that place in the park.” Lena jumps up and pulls Kara with her. Kara just follows along. She wasn’t going to turn down hanging out with Lena. She wasn’t going to slip up this time.

She’d protect Lena from harm at the same time as enjoying a triple scoop.

She could multitask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day nine, feeling fine


	10. ice

“Did you ever dream about your wedding as a kid?” Kara asks out of the blue. They’re working together in her apartment, after Kara forced her to leave the office and dragged Lena home with her, saying they could take a break for dinner and then she would graciously let Lena get back to work if she wanted. That she had her own article to write.

They’re on opposite sides of the couch. Their feet bumping into one another. Kara had started a slight foot war about half an hour ago that was still ongoing in between moments of true focus because Lena refused to lose (and she liked the way Kara pushed her toes up her leg).

“Not really. I think I was a little preoccupied wondering if I’d be allowed to marry a girl or if I was going to be pawned off to someone like Bruce Wayne.” Lena shudders at the thought. She liked Bruce, sure, but she couldn’t imagine anything worse than dating him or spending extended periods of time in his weird underground cave. Even thinking about it in her head felt like the plot to some serial killer book.

“You couldn’t be with Bruce. You’re both too broody; you’d get nothing done beyond sullen looks and pessimism.” Lena kicks Kara who tries to act hurt but mostly just laughs.

“Did you? Think about your wedding?” It doesn’t take Lena much effort to imagine Kara at a wedding. (It takes a little more effort to stop imagining the wedding as her own too).

Kara shrugs. “Not the same way other people did. My preoccupation was the whole who would want to date an alien thing.”

“And now look at you. Last week you met the president of the Supergirl fan-club who tweeted that she would drag her left tit through an alley of glass just to see you in a wedding dress for five minutes. Life can really turn around so fast.” Kara kicks her this time. Lena smothers her laughter a lot better than Kara did, feigning outrage until Kara leans awkwardly to rub the spot she hit in apology. Lena reddens and stares at her laptop.

“Andrea asked me to write for the wedding section this week because Denise is having her own wedding and I just feel like such a fraud. I know nothing about any of this. I literally just wrote _every girl dreams about her wedding as a kid_ like could I be any more of a cliché?”

“You should write about insane wedding ice sculptures. That’s the only thing I ever thought about when people would ask how I wanted to be married. The rest of it was blank but I did know I find them hilarious.”

“You wanted an ice sculpture?” Kara asks incredulously.

“Of course. They’re so dumb. Lillian would have seethed and it’s just the kind of unnecessarily extravagant thing that other people would start to think they needed. Every party in the inner circle would be complete with crazier and crazier ice sculptures.”

“You wanted one just to mess with people?”

“Absolutely.”

Kara grins, closing her laptop a little more as she gets more intrigued in what Lena’s saying, and significantly less intrigued in completing her work. “What did you want a sculpture of?”

“Oh definitely something garish. Like a life-size mermaid or cowboy where the lasso can move.”

“Your mind is so powerful-“ Kara flicks her laptop back open. Starts typing away excitedly- “I’m writing it. I’ll find the people tomorrow.”

“I’m so glad I’m not running CatCo anymore so I don’t have to deal with this.”

“This was your idea! When Andrea sets on her warpath after I send her my draft I’m definitely throwing you straight under the bus.” Kara sticks her tongue out and Lena follows suit. “You know what; I’m actually just going to put your name on the by-line.”

“Don’t you dare,” Lena threatens.

Kara types slowly with one finger. Each move pointed as she stares at Lena and then down at her laptop screen with feigned shock. “Oops, it looks like I already did.”

“I will leave.” Lena jokingly pushes herself up. She has literally no real intent on leaving. She was warm, and comfortable, and filled with Kara’s homemade pasta. She was quite happy to just die on this couch and turn into a fossil on the fabric. Kara seems to semi-believe the threat though because she grips Lena’s thigh tightly and keeps her locked down as she speedily hits the backspace key.

( _Fuck her hands were big_ ).

“Don’t leave. I hate working alone.”

“Okay you’ve convinced me. But I would love some tea to sweeten the pot.”

“Coming right up!” Kara jumps up, returns to her with a mug of steaming hot tea in mere seconds. Her eyes still look a little red from where she’s cheated with heat vision. Lena will never admit how hot she finds it. Instead she burns her tongue happily on the tea and keeps sipping as her and Kara go back to their quiet coworking.

Lena realises she kind of hates working alone too these days when she’s sitting bored in her office the next day until Kara bursts in with a grin. “Are you ready for something amazing?”

“Let’s go with yes.”

“Jess, bring her in!” Her assistant comes in with a frown on her face but evident amusement in her eyes. The same way she usually looked at Kara. Like she thought that Kara was an idiot, but she also appreciated that she was Lena’s idiot. And with her, she’s pulling… a giant ice sculpture.

“Kara you didn’t.”

“I was interviewing a man today when he got a last minute cancellation and I just sort of offered to take it off his hands for like thirty bucks. Isn’t it great?”

It is pretty great. A howling wolf on a mountain top. It’s way too big and it’s so stupid and had Kara carted this across the city just to laugh at it with her because she made a dumb comment about her hypothetical wedding dreams? She was everything.

And apparently not done yet. “There’s more.” She grins and then presses a button on the stand. Liquid starts to flow out of the wolf’s mouth in an arc, falling back at its feet and flowing back into the stream. “Apparently the wedding party were going to put vodka in it.”

“Genius,” Lena compliments.

“Thought it was a good idea to keep in mind for our wedding.” Lena’s heart stops. Her breath catches. She stares at Kara who is still smiling until her words and Lena’s reaction combine in her head and she runs the last few seconds back. “Weddings! Our wedding _s_. As in plural. Separate events. Two casual, unrelated weddings.”

“Okay, Kara, I get it.” She laughs fondly until Kara takes a breath after her ramble.

“I’ll let you get back to work. I need to take this to the ice cream shop to keep it in their industrial freezer. I can’t wait to offend Alex with it at Game Night later. You’re still coming right?”

“Seven sharp. I’ll be there.” Kara grins, waves and then starts pushing the ice sculpture out with a final goodbye.

Lena would argue it’s definitely worth any trouble Kara went through when Alex starts swearing about how stupid it is that evening. It’s even more worth it when Kara turns it on to the revelation that Lena had filled it with Alex’s favourite scotch and her words die in her mouth and her eyes go wide. Kelly all but carries Alex out of the door that night.

(Kara closes the door with Lena inside.

She falls asleep to the sight of her smile).


	11. travel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is based on the vague premise of being high just as a warning to anyone who may not want to read it, everyone else, hello, welcome to day 11

“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” Lena asks. The words sound weird to her ears. But she thinks that has something to do with a few factors.

Firstly, she and Kara are lying with their heads hanging off the sofa and their legs stuck in the air and all the blood in her body was slowly rushing to her head. Secondly, she hasn’t heard her own voice for what feels like three hours. Thirdly, the first two things are true because her and Kara are incredibly high.

Kara had been hit with some new kind of air borne kryptonite device - only the kryptonite hadn’t done the usual things. It had just made her kind of loopy, and spaced, and even hungrier than usual. Lena had offered to take care of her whilst Alex continued to look for the source.

At first, it had just been her laughing at Kara for about an hour before Kara wore her down enough with her begging to get Lena to join her on her level.

Now they’re four bags of cheeseballs deep and saying whatever pops into their minds when they’re not just watching The Road to El Dorado upside down and wondering how it even managed to become more trippy than usual.

“I can already go anywhere,” Kara replies, giggling.

“Okay but if someone came up to you right now and said you have a week off from reporting and super-heroing duties, go have a holiday, where would you go?”

Kara tries to look serious as she turns to Lena, but her face looks so red and it’s scrunched up so much in genuine concentration that all Lena wants to do is laugh at her. She just barely reins it in as Kara asks, “Do you have the same week off?”

“Sure,” she confirms. Kara grins.

“There’s a planet not too far from where Krypton used to be where time seems to move backwards but it takes a couple of days for your own body and mind to catch up, like planetary jetlag, so for a little while everyone just looks really hilarious. That's where I'd take you.”

“How does that even work?”

“Never question something so fantastic, Lena. Just embrace the weirdness.” Kara turns to her, pokes her cheeks a few times. Pressing for longer intervals sometimes. Eyes laser focused on her task but her mind elsewhere. “Where would you go?”

“I was just thinking like Great Barrier Reef to maybe see some jellyfish. I like the way their bodies go like…” Lena peters off as she re-enacts the tentacles with her hands, getting ever more invested in the movement until she can’t remember why she was moving her hand in the first place and is just ever distracted by what the limb looks like.

“Well it’s settled then. We go to Australia first and then we go to space.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.” Lena watches the screen for a moment before another thought pops into her head. “What about time travel?”

Kara shakes her head until her eyes go a little dizzy. “Already tried that, didn’t like it so much.”

“You time travelled without me?” Lena pouts.

“Technically you were there,” Kara answers cryptically.

“What do you mean?” Lena prompts when Kara doesn’t seem to be willing to offer up any more information of her own volition.

“When you were mad at me, Mxy gave me a chance to see if telling you at any other time would have been better. I tried it so many times and you always ended up dead. I don’t want to time travel if it means I have to watch you die again.”

Lena chooses to focus on the less depressing section of all that. The part that’s really stuck in her head. The part she knows she’ll think about time and again when this conversation is said and done. The part that makes her chest the tightest. “You had a chance to time travel and you spent it apologising to me?”

“You were really mad at me and not the pretty mad you get like when you found out I was faking liking kombucha for you, but like sad mad. Sad mad Lena is my least favourite.” Lena remembers the second she realised why she was so mad at Kara. The second she realised she wasn't really mad at all - just crushed. Crushed that the woman she was pretending she wasn't in love with was pretending about everything else throughout their entire relationship. Crushed that she didn't trust her enough, crushed that her own mind went straight to thinking she wasn't worthy, crushed that she didn't have all of Kara like Kara had all of her.

She remembers the second she stopped being mad at all. She remembers the second when the love she felt swelling in her chest overcame everything else, when logic poured in and filled in the cracks in her heart. She remembers the second she stopped and let Kara's warmth wrap back around her.

“Pretty mad?”

“The prettiest.” Kara nods until she can’t stop nodding. Until Lena halts the automatic bobbing with her hand and a smile.

“I’d go see dinosaurs,” Lena says.

Kara gasps, “I take it back. I would love to see a T-Rex.”

Alex comes to fill them in later. She finds Kara and Lena drawing all over Kara’s coffee table about how they realistically could recreate Jurassic Park without all the murder and obvious profit loss. They’re scarily close to figuring out the logistics for two people off their faces with moustaches drawn on their faces with Lena's way too expensive eyeliner. 

(Alex snaps a picture for later blackmail.

Her collection was getting scarily impressive).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jellyfish brought to you by my continued obsession with 'breathing is easier under water (i can see sky from here)' by littlemousejelly


	12. dress up

“Kara, stop getting more clothes out. You have seventeen perfectly fine outfits on your bed already.” Kara doesn’t even bother turning to look at Alex as she throws another potential shirt behind her head. By potential she means potential for her to hate the idea of it in about five minutes or less. You know what? Definitely less. Who did she think she was trying to pull out jeans and a nice top for this? That wasn’t going to work. Nothing she owned was going to work.

“They’re not fine, Alex. I’m gonna look like a chump and Lena needs this to go well.” Kara bumps her head into the wall beside her. Takes slight comfort in the cooling nature of the brick against her forehead.

“It’s a boarding school reunion, not the Nobel prize award ceremony.” A reunion that Lena had nervously invited her to after twisting her fingers through an entire dinner and giving Kara a thousand outs before she even posed the question. An invite that she seemed to never expect Kara to actually say yes to. An invite that Kara was never going to say no to – no matter how nervous the whole thing made her.

She’d walked through fire for Lena.

Trial by snooty posh people.

“Rich people boarding school reunion,“ Kara corrects, “and you know they were all dicks to her when things went down with Lex. I just want them to be embarrassed they ever judged her like that. I don’t want them thinking she brought some weirdo in an ugly dress as her date. _Friend date_.”

Alex snorts. “Fake date, you mean.”

Kara spins round to look at her in her attempt to convince her of her words (she’s trying to convince herself too). “Look we’re not doing anything really couple-y, we’re just also not saying that we’re not a couple.” And maybe holding hands or whatever.

“Recipe for disaster,” Alex says.

“You’re not being at all helpful.”

“Fine, okay.” Alex gets up from where she’s lounging, half covered by all of Kara’s clothes, drops them onto the floor without a care and walks over to join her by the wardrobe. “I vote this.” She pulls the item from the hanger.

Kara chews on her bottom lip. “I’ve never actually worn it.”

“Yeah because you bought it, looked amazing, and then got scared that it was too much. But, if there were ever a time to pick an outfit you thought was too much, it’s this one apparently. Now put it on, let me do your hair and stop freaking out so much.”

Kara takes a deep breath. “I can do that.” She can half do it. She’s still freaking out but puts the outfit on and let’s Alex straighten her hair in a gentle rhythm that she at least takes some comfort in.

She always liked the way Alex did her hair. It reminded her of Astra when she was a child. Delicate actions but deft precision. Alex had always known what to do, even when her own hair never really tended to stem beyond her shoulders. Kara always felt like she’s perfected the art for her and that meant a lot. She learned the ins and outs of hair gel for Alex in return.

It was the little things about being a sister – the acts, the thoughts, the genuine care beyond the genuine mocking.

“You look great,” Alex tells her when she’s staring at herself in the mirror to avoid looking directly at the clock (she can still see it over her shoulder in the reflection).

She does look pretty good though. She’s glad Alex talked her into a three-piece suit. Coloured in a charcoal grey, it settles well on her shoulders, cuts in at all the right places. The burgundy pocket square is sharp. The chain on her pocket watch perfectly polished by over-anxious fingers. It’s about as expensive as she was going to look. She just hopes it was expensive enough.

She almost jumps out of her loafers when a knock sounds on her door. Alex pushes her towards it with sympathetic but exasperated hands. She almost swallows her tongue when she sees Lena on the other side. Wide-eyed Lena. Were wide-eyes a good thing?

“Kara you look-“

“I have a tie if you think it needs it.”

Lena quickly shakes her head. The motion a little jerky. “No you look perfect as is. I really want to call you beautiful but I think handsome might be more appropriate.” She steps forward to run her fingers across the collar of Kara’s white shirt. The one she’d debated on the sensible number of buttons undone on (she went with two). “You’re going to make multiple people very jealous of me.”

“I don’t think it’s me they’ll be looking at.” If they were sensible, they’d spend every minute of their evening dissecting every millimetre of Lena. Kara knows she won’t be able to take her eyes away.

Her black cocktail dress is off the shoulder, exposing her clavicle and skimming across the top of her chest. It hugs every curve, stopping just below the knee, with a slight slit that doesn’t dare to edge too high up her leg, aware it has no right to reach any higher.

Lena’s hair is pulled into a sleek ponytail that lets her strong jaw and sharp cheekbones take centre stage on her face, alongside the dark lip that coincidentally matches almost perfectly to the pocket square Kara chose. She looks so pretty, Kara thinks she might blackout.

“You sure you’re ready for this? You can absolutely still back out.”

“Do you want to back out?” Kara asks.

Lena visibly steels herself. “No I think I want to suffer for like an hour and then congratulate myself by being overdressed in Big Belly Burger.”

“That’s my kind of plan.” It’s not so bad in the end. The food is a little posh rather than filling and Kara thinks the people working the event are far nicer than anyone else attending, but the music is nostalgic, and people mostly leave them alone. Lena smiles her real smile more often than her fake one. She points herself out in photos for Kara’s benefit and lets her laugh appropriately at her awkward phases, lets her coo at the times she looks too cute for words.

(It’s like unlocking another part of Lena’s life.

Kara can’t wait for the day she knows it all).

It’s better when they leave. When they take Lena’s car to Big Belly and sit in a half-torn booth with a slightly sticky table and get served by a half-asleep teen who looks like she would rather be anywhere than at work.

It’s better when Kara is eating an obscene amount of dirty fries and Lena is indulging in what she calls a recuperation milkshake (‘It has to be banana, Kara. The other flavours won’t do for this kind of damage.’)

“I think that went alright,” Kara says when she stops for a breath. “I have to say all the fake relationship movies had set me up for far more PDA.”

“You did have your hands dangerously close to my ass when we danced,” Lena points out and, yeah, she did. She’d had them ludicrously tame at first, basically her shoulder blades but then she’d heard whispers, seen looks so she slid them slightly lower.

Lena had pressed closer to her in response. It had spurred Kara’s hands even lower until her pinky fingers skimmed somewhere they probably shouldn’t have but Lena hadn’t said a thing, just tucked her head into Kara’s neck and that was enough for her.

(Even if Lena was faking it for tonight, that would’ve been enough for her).

“Yeah but the films have far more 'prove your relationship by kissing; scenes.” Milkshake drips down Lena’s chin a little as she coughs. She waves off Kara’s concern quickly, wiping her face.

“You’d have kissed me?”

“With your consent,” Kara says without thought and then she has too many thoughts all at once. “Why? Would you not have kissed me?”

“Obviously I’d have kissed you,” Lena says quickly. “I mean, it would definitely have sold it-“ Lena swallows harshly- “and you seem like you’d be a good kisser.”

“Oh I’d have knocked your socks off."

“Maybe next time.”

“Next time for sure,” Kara says. It feels oddly like a promise.

(She might organise a school reunion herself just to have the chance).


	13. lucky

Kara thinks about fate a lot.

She watched a how it’s made video on puzzles not long after she landed on earth. She watched as the full picture was created, how it was cut once it was done. From full to fragmented and put back together again by deft human hands. A puzzle was meant to look a certain way, you could choose to try to put pieces elsewhere, but they’d always end up in the right place in the end, or else the picture wouldn’t fit, wouldn’t complete.

The end was always destined.

Fate was always puzzling.

She used to calm her fears of being in a new world by telling herself she was always meant to be here. That nothing could have been done to save her world. That she didn’t miss any signs, her parents didn’t duck their heads into the red sand, her world was over before anyone knew to help because that was the way everything was supposed to be. However sad.

Kara told herself she was always meant to land after Clark. That he was always meant to grow up without Kryptonian influence no matter how much it saddened her to be alone. She was meant to carry their world on her shoulders. He was always meant to be more human than alien. It would make people trust him more. It would make him care more about these people, this planet.

Kara was supposed to be saved by the Danvers. Alex was supposed to be her best friend. She was supposed to use her powers. She was supposed to suffer to build compassion. Every choice she made, every situation she found, was exactly what she was supposed to do, where she was supposed to be.

For the longest time she thought fate had dealt her a bad hand. One of the first English words she truly felt she understood was unlucky. It resonated with her. Sat on her shoulders and whispered in her ear when things were hard that this was just the way it was going to be – she wouldn’t fit in, she would always be weird, she would always be losing things.

Then one day Alex punched a boy for calling her a freak.

She thinks that was the day her luck turned.

Alex knocked a tooth from his mouth and the world in her favour in one fell swoop. Everything was better from then. She got a job at CatCo, she fought her way through being Cat’s assistant until Cat cared enough to know her name, her life, her struggle and give her advice. She was lucky to have a mentor like her.

She met Winn and James who didn’t flinch at her true identity, who called her a hero, who helped her find her way, who never gave up on her. The first real best friends she’d had beyond Alex and Kenny. The people who helped her learn what true friendship was meant to be, who gave back to her as much as she gave to them.

And then the luckiest part of her life - being placed in Lena’s path. And she knew it was that way round. Lena hadn’t been placed in hers. Lena was an arrow zooming towards a target, she was beauty and grace and poise and Kara was just the wind helping her glide, being cut through. She was more than happy to play that part.

She was lucky to exist at the same time as Lena Luthor. On the same earth. In the same city. She was lucky Lena called her, her best friend. She was lucky she forgave her. She was lucky to get a chance to love her.

“You’re staring,” Lena says, pushing her glasses up her face in a very Kara-like fashion. Kara thinks maybe a question came before that, but she wasn’t listening enough to know. She’d forgotten to listen properly a while ago, she’s glad she brought her tape recorder to this meeting even when Lena leans over to turn it off. “What’s on your mind?”

Usually Kara would tame her words. House train them in her mouth. She doesn’t feel like doing that today. “I think you’re the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.”

Lena blushes. “ _Oh_.”

“Sorry I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” Lena assures her quickly. Kara lets the rush of her tone egg her on in her ramble.

“I just can’t believe I get to exist at the same time as you. Don’t you think it’s crazy that I travelled across the universe, was stuck in the phantom zone for just the right amount of time, and ended up in just the right city to meet you?”

“I came to National City for you,” Lena admits and it’s like the words tip her whole world upside down, push it ever so slightly out of orbit until it feels like even the earth gave up on the sun to place Lena at the centre of the universe.

“You what?” Not her most eloquent. She’s glad the recorder isn’t catching her being an idiot. The recorder had heard too much of that in its lifetime.

“I was watching the news the day you saved that plane. I remember seeing you heaving like you’d never breathed air before and you were drenched from head to toe and just… smiling so brightly it was insane. I’d never seen someone look so destroyed and so immense at once.

“I kept watching you, reading about you, searching your name. I’m sure the government probably put me on some kind of Luthor watchlist for how much I typed your name into Google but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop wanting to learn about you and watching you grow. I couldn’t stop thinking about how you were nothing like my brother always claimed you to be.

“You weren’t righteous or self-serving or egotistical. You were just a girl in a soaking wet jumper who cared enough to ruin her evening plans to save those of so many others. I wanted to be like that, to be like you, so I packed up my apartment and told Jack the patents were all his and I moved my life to National City. For you.

“Because I think _you’re_ the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met,” Lena finishes. She doesn’t shy away from Kara’s gaze at all, says every word with every bit of intent she has - Kara feels like she’s drowning in the emotion dripping from them. It’s kind of peaceful, to be submerged.

“You never told me that.”

Lena cracks a smile. “It’s not exactly first meeting material.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I didn’t used to. But I think I might just fight in its corner these days.”

Kara thought a lot about fate.

She thinks fate thought a lot about her too.

(She wasn’t going to complain.

Fate had made her pretty lucky).


	14. midvale

“So this is where little Kara Danvers would angst about teenage life?” Lena asks as she steps into Kara’s room, if only to distract her mind from the fact that she was in Kara’s bedroom.

Kara’s _childhood_ bedroom, in her childhood home that Lena had accepted an invite into for Thanksgiving - a fact that felt big. It felt different than Kara having friends round her apartment on the holiday. It felt different than meeting Eliza in the comfort of National City where Lena could run away at any time.

Now she was in Kara’s home. Alone. The two of them.

Kara had invited her, only her. Like Alex had invited Kelly. Was it the same? Should she be thinking about it the same, was Kara thinking about it the same, did Kara mean it the same? Or did she invite Lena because she knew she was the only one who would sit alone in her office all day if she didn’t have explicit plans?

…That was a depressing thought.

“I didn’t angst,” Kara argues.

Lena doesn’t believe her for a single second. “Don’t forget that Alex will be here in an hour and is very eager to spill all your secrets.”

“Okay so maybe there was a little angsting.” Lena smiles as Kara gives in. She looks around the room a little. At the things Kara pinned up on the walls but had since left behind. N-Sync posters and old photos of her and Alex. Posters from films Lena has never seen and a telescope that Lena would guess never had a chance to gather dust.

She can imagine Kara in here clear as day. The same black glasses on a less sure frame. The same smile if not a little shakier, a little less sure. A familiar love of soft jumpers and even softer colours. Plenty of laughter between her and Alex (a little bit of teen sibling drama too).

“What about awkward homework sessions that were really dates on your tiny single bed?” Lena punctuates her question by throwing herself onto it. Kara smiles, pushes Lena along and climbs on to lay beside her. Rests her hands on her stomach, laces them together. Lena copies her. Edges slightly closer under the guise of getting comfortable (ultimately it is more comfortable to be more closely pressed into Kara’s side).

“I’ve actually never brought anyone home,” Kara says simply.

“So I’m your first?” Lena wiggles her eyebrows. She does it to detract from the way her throat restricts, the way her chest squeezes a little at the idea that Kara Danvers hadn’t thought anyone worthy of bringing into her home until Lena. Lena doesn’t know what she did to deserve that, but she thinks she might need a written breakdown to make sure she can continue doing it, can never stop doing it.

“Yeah so we better hurry up before my mom gets home,” Kara jokes. Lena blushes from her head to her toes. Groans and hides her face. Kara laughs joyously and tugs at her hands, attempting to catch her eyes. It ends with her body half on top of Lena’s and Lena blushing even harder. “Don’t give if you can’t take, Lena.”

“You’ve really never brought anyone home?” Lena asks timidly.

“Alex was my best friend for most of my life and she was already here-” Kara starts- “I used to find it hard making friends when I felt like I was hiding half of myself.”

“How’d you get over it?”

“I realised my powers aren’t who I am - I’m Kara regardless of if I’m Kara from Krypton or Midvale. I still like the same things, and get the same songs stuck in my head, and care about the same people, would still fight for all the same reasons. I guess I realised I wasn’t hiding any of the parts of myself that really matter in the scheme of things.”

“I’m glad you figured out how to make friends with people who didn’t know your secret. Even if I’m still a little annoyed I didn’t see through your very obvious lies.”

Kara scoffs, “I’m not obvious.”

“ _I flew here on a bus._ ” That was her best Kara impression yet.

“Oh my god, Lena! I don’t sound like that.” Kara pulls the pillow from beneath Lena’s head and hits her with it. Double blow. Kara reaches back to hit her again when she bounces up. “Eliza’s here.” She grins and offers Lena a hand. She takes it. Smoothes out her clothes and hair, checks herself one last time in the mirror before following Kara’s tugs downstairs.

They make it right as Eliza opens the door. “Kara,” she says with all the warmth in the world. Kara hugs her tightly, careful not the squash the grocery bag Eliza holds. “Put these away for me?”

“Of course.” Kara grins, takes the bag and bounds off with a salute. Offers Lena a parting and reassuring smile.

“Lena I’m glad you could make it.” Eliza steps forward. She doesn’t push for a hug but once Lena opens her arms for it, she steps closer and pulls her in tightly. A hug that pricks at the back of Lena’s mind. She drops her head into Eliza’s shoulder a little more. She smells a little like lab chemicals and a little like roasted turkey and a lot like a mother.

“Thank you for having me,” Lena says when she forces herself to pull back.

Eliza brushes under Lena’s eyes until she recognises the wetness there. Eliza’s eyes hold no pity, no sympathy, no worry, just understanding and warmth. “You’re always welcome here, with Kara or without. Preferably sometimes without – I have a few questions for you that I never get to ask without her interrupting.”

“She does have a habit of-“

“Groceries all away. What are you guys talking about?”

“I truly hope you didn’t just superspeed around my kitchen and scuff up the floor, Kara Danvers.”

Kara looks thoroughly chastised. “No?” She starts stepping backwards without taking her eyes off them for a moment and Eliza follows with a complete mom look. She turns to Lena over her shoulder and winks before turning back to see what chaos Kara may have accidentally caused.

It feels like a family.

It feels like maybe it’s her family.

(She refused to fuck that up).


	15. kale

Lena found comfort in cooking from a young age.

She remembers standing on a stool beside her mother and pretending she knew what she was doing. She remembers mostly spilling flour on herself and licking the spoon when her mother was done with sweet treats and calling it baking. She remembers the warmth of it, even if she can’t always imagine the exact curve of her mother’s smile.

She remembers finding solace with the chef in the Luthor mansion. He was a fan of her tiny human curiosity and her willingness to try any flavour he had to offer. He taught her new pairings, and techniques and how to dissect a meal from its end point to its creation. He taught her how to find passion in it, to find appreciation, to find the intrigue – appealing to her hunger for knowledge.

She remembers baking through her stress at college and hiding in the grill room of a diner during her doctorate just to distract her from the real world for a moment. She remembers making Jack a birthday cake and bringing Jess a homemade lunch after a particularly stressful day that she helped her through. She remembers making Ruby comfort brownies and cooking Sam her favourite meal after a week from hell.

Lena finds comfort in cooking.

Sometimes it’s how she offers it too.

“It smells amazing,” Kara says over her shoulder. Lena jumps, sauce flicking from the pot as her spoon jerks in surprise.

Lena doesn’t even turn to look as she pushes Kara’s face away. “Stop trying to peek.”

“Please just tell me what it is,” Kara begs. She’s been asking since Lena invited her round, since she arrived with a dirt covered suit and sleepy eyes.

She asked when she got dressed into the comfortable clothes she kept in Lena’s closet, and asked again when Lena told her to sit on the couch, and again when she got bored flicking through the channels. And now, over Lena’s shoulder, smelling like Lena’s own body wash in a way that makes Lena’s chest threaten to cave in on itself.

“It’s a surprise. Now go sit back down before your legs give out from under you.” Kara’s practically sagging into her now. It’d been a long day. For both of them. Lena had watched Kara fight battles from the moment she stepped into the office to the moment she left. She looked wrecked by the end of it and still stopped to smile for photos with a bunch of kids excitedly bounding onto the scene.

“It’s boring without you.”

Lena pushes a laugh past the lump in her throat. “You’re five feet away.”

“And what about it?” Kara presses.

“Entertain yourself for seven minutes and I’m all yours.” That was a lie. She was always all Kara’s. Had been for a long time now. Would be for a long time after this. But that felt a little bold to say on a Wednesday afternoon over a boiling pot of sauce.

“Seven is very specific,” Kara notes, making no secret of her attempt to stay around the stove for a little bit longer.

Lena turns around for the first time to hit Kara with a look. A look that says are you really asking this question like you’re not the reason a precedent has been set for the answer. “I was going to round to five but we both know you’d start whining the second the five minute mark hit and I wasn’t actually done.”

“I don’t whine,” Kara says in a tone that sounds incredibly whine adjacent. She pairs the words with a slight huff and a crossing of her arms. The kind of behaviour she always exhibits when she’s like this - running off fumes and attempting to fight the dreams begging to take her over. Thankfully she also follows Lena’s request to sit back down on the couch and wait.

Six minutes and fifty seconds later, Lena joins her with two plates.

“I still can’t believe you can cook anything like this,” Kara says as she eyes the plate appreciatively, turning it this way and that like viewing an art piece. Lena digs into her own plate in the meantime until Kara takes her own, admittedly much larger, bite. Kara moans in delight, quickly shovelling one more bite in, her eyes essentially rolling back into her head as Lena laughs and takes a bite of her own. “This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten."

“Really?” Kara nods, mouth full. “I put kale in it,” Lena admits. A smirk planted securely on her lips. Kara’s eyes bulge. She swallows with reluctance.

“Why would you do that to me?” She asks, far more dramatically than the event calls for.

“I just felt like you should give kale another go. I thought that maybe you had decided your opinion on kale so long ago that you didn’t even really remember why you decided on that opinion about kale and maybe you should rethink your thoughts… about kale. Give kale another chance to be something else in your life. Something more.”

“I feel like I’m missing something.” Her and Lena both. Lena was definitely missing several braincells and also a filter to stop her random rambles apparently. She needed to stop spending so much time with Kara, her mannerisms were too contagious.

(She’d continue to spend as much time as Kara offered).

“I-“ _I’m the kale_ is maybe what she should have said, maybe what she would have said if she had the guts. In a perfect world, she would’ve been honest. In an even more perfect world, she wouldn’t have started with some weird kale metaphor. In that world she just said, _I love being your best friend but if you wanted to think of me romantically that would also be amazing_.

She doesn’t say either of those. She says, “I’m just taking my role as Earth’s kale protector seriously.”

“It still sucks. But this is acceptable.” Kara continues to munch happily.

Lena wonders when she’ll crumble, when she’ll finally spill every feeling in her chest. She wonders if she’ll be a rockslide into the abyss when she does or a violent eruption begging to be heard.

(She knows it’s inevitable.

She’s terrified either way).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay but kale does suck - its the dickhead of the cabbage family


	16. water

“Kara what did you just drink?” Kara pulls the glass away from her lips slowly, turning her attention to Alex. An incredibly panicked looking Alex. She looks from her to the glass of clear liquid in her hand.

“…water?” It definitely tasted funny. But it was in a decanter and it was clear, and she was pretty sure it was water. But like, that fancy kind of water that isn’t purified so it’s got all the minerals and tastes like iron. She’d read about that.

It seemed like the kind of thing Lena would probably have lying around, the kind of thing she’d tell Kara the health benefits of and claim even Kryptonian’s needed to look after themselves. The kind of thing Kara was definitely planning on getting on Lena’s good side for later when she told her what she’d done. Except, Alex was giving her a look like that was definitely not on the cards for her today.

“From that?” Alex points.

“Alex, what is it?” Kara presses desperately.

“You know that alien you fought the other day?”

“The one with the electric hands?” Kara guesses.

“No. The other one."

She recalibrates. “The one with three horns?”

“No, though it was definitely horn-something.”

Kara looks at her sharply. It couldn’t be… no. Her luck couldn’t be that bad. “The one spewing pheromones? The pheromones I was so proud of avoiding the entire fight?” Alex grimaces. “Alex, what is this?” She repeats.

“We may have taken a few samples to see what the makeup of the pheromones was to try to create an antidote for any later run-ins with the species.” The species.

_The species_.

The species who make you blurt the sexual thoughts from your head without real filter. The species who inflate even vague attraction into some intense kind of lust for an undetermined amount of time. The species who literally fed off the pheromones created through that process, making their pheromones more and more potent with each hit (the species who hit like a quarter of National City before Kara stopped them).

“Is the antidote ready?"

The answer is written all over Alex’s face before she even says, “It is not.”

“And ingesting it orally? How does that compare to inhaling it?” She’d seen the people who inhaled it. The first news reports had put it down to Valentine’s fever. It was far wilder than that. Kara had heard things she would never be able to forget. Now she was probably going to be saying them.

“We’re currently under the impression it may be a little worse.”

“I need to hide.” They were in Lena’s lab. She couldn’t get caught in Lena’s lab. Not like this. “Tell Lena she can’t come anywhere near me, I can’t-“

“Kara what’s in your hand?” Lena strolls in. Tablet in hand, eyes securely on Kara. Shit.

“I’m not doing this again okay. It’s the pheromones, I drank them and every time I see you in that dress I think about getting you out of it.” It was always the lack of filter that got you.

“I- _what?_ ”

“Can you step out of the doorway before I pin you against it, please?” Lena opens and closes her mouth. Kara feels her face heat. She’s not even going to bother her mouth to ask it to try to fix that one. Lena sidesteps mindlessly and Kara practically sprints out.

She hides in her apartment. The safest place in a time like this. She watches the least sexual films she can think of, spends half an hour in a cold shower, refuses to pick up her phone in case she sees her lockscreen of her and Lena and does something embarrassing like send her a thirst text.

Turns out that’s the completely wrong decision because she hears Lena’s heartbeat outside her door not long after. She thinks she might be knocking but Kara can’t zone back in on the sound, can’t focus on anything beyond the bi-dum, bi-dum, bi-dum.

“Kara, let me in. I have the antidote.” Kara stares at the grains in the wood. “Kara, seriously, open the door so I can administer it. Alex got called away so it’s me or nothing for a few hours.”

Kara sighs but stands to open the door. Lena’s changed outfits. No longer in the dress from earlier but now in a t-shirt and baggy sweats that Kara is almost sure are hers. She knows she did it to try make things easier, to try make Kara more comfortable. She hasn’t succeeded. If anything, she’s made it infinitely worse.

“Hi,” she squeaks out.

Lena laughs a little. “Sit down. We can fix this.”

Kara drops onto the couch. Lena sits beside her far more gracefully. Puts her case on the table and pops it open. Her shirt rides up a little where she leans forward. Her hair falls to expose her neck and Kara wants nothing more than to put her lips on every available patch of skin. To taste the vague salt of a day’s sweat. To feel the pulse thrumming beneath her skin. To bite the curves of her hips.

Kara puts her hand on Lena’s thigh before she can think how bad an idea it is. Midway between her knee and a place she definitely shouldn’t be touching. The one place she really just wants to touch.

Lena gasps, high-pitched and breathy and addictive. She doesn’t turn from loading the dose into the jet injector. Kara digs her fingers in a little just to hear it again. Lena’s chest heaves a little with ragged breaths. In, out, in, in, out.

“Maybe we could hold off on the antidote for a moment?” She finds herself asking. It doesn’t sound like her. Pitched too low. A little too rough.

Lena shakes her head, still not looking. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“To who?” Lena doesn’t answer. Just jams it into Kara’s neck with a sharp prick. It’s a pretty quick transition switching from feeling like she’s going to come out of her skin if she doesn’t touch Lena right that second, to feeling like she might just jump out of her skin in panic because she’s touching Lena. Inappropriately. Without her express consent. “Fuck, Lena. I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine. You weren’t in your right mind.” Lena slowly packs the case back up before she even attempts to look Kara’s way. Even then it’s a little off kilter.

“That doesn’t make it okay. You can say it’s not okay, I felt like it wasn’t okay, I mean it’s not exactly how I imagined touching you-“ Kara’s eyes bulge- “Not that I like _imagined_ touching you. Not that wanting to touch you would be weird, I’m sure a lot of people want to touch you. I mean, just look at you, you’re very touchable. I-“

“Kara, you can stop digging,” Lena cuts in. “Really, it’s fine, you didn’t ask to be infected with some lust creating pheromones. I do appreciate you checking in though.”

Kara breathes slowly. “You sure?” Lena nods. “Okay.”

“I’m sure it was just as bad for you, suddenly feeling those things for your best friend,” Lena says and it feels a little loaded. It feels _a lot_ loaded. Kara looks at her blankly for a second. She debates saying it. She debates telling her. She debates even harder just kissing her, proving that she thinks about it all the time anyway.

She does none of those things.

Instead she plants a smile on her face and says, “I’m hungry. Apology takeout?” You know, like a coward. Lena accepts the excuse like she always does. Kara wonders what might have happened if she didn’t, if she called her out. She wonders if orange chicken tastes the same on Lena’s tongue.

(She knows the answer is no.

She doesn’t know how to handle the thought that she might never truly _know_ ).


	17. beautiful

Kara has always loved taking photos.

When she was younger, she used it as a boundary between her and the world. A line drawn in the sand that she wasn’t ready to cross. Eliza gave her, her first camera – it was old, the leather strap worn, the case a little cracked, a slight fading on the shutter button from a finger rubbed too many times over in the same spot.

Kara used it to view the world. It became her eyes when her eyes felt a little too sharp - everything felt a little less harsh viewed through a lens, a little less focused filtered through a device.

It made it oddly easier to pretend maybe she was still home. It made it easier to trick herself into thinking she was simply viewing holograms of a whole new universe for the first time, testing it out before she decided whether or not to stay.

Eliza’s smile was wobbly the first time she saw Kara without her camera, the first day she asked if they could go on a walk and she didn’t take it with her, just took in the leaves and the sky and the grass as they were.

They both knew what it meant. They both knew Kara was open to making a new home, a new family.

She still picked up the camera after that – still picks it up - but it became more about the art of capturing a moment, of knowing she had one shot to find the perfect second and catch it, immortalise it, frame it.

She liked the peace of searching for the right angle and the right light. The right subject. It went hand in hand with how she viewed journalism. It was about all the same things – knowing how to frame a story, who to make the focal point, what to highlight and what to let fade into the background. Being a reporter gave her the same kind of solace now as that first camera did sitting in her hands.

Distant but closer than ever. And sometimes so incredibly frustrating when your deadline is looming but all you really want to do is follow through with plans you’d made.

“Give me a second and I’m ready to go,” Kara says, typing the finishing pieces to her article. Lena nods and looks around. Kara tries to stop herself spending all her time just watching her and remembering she’s actually doing something here.

(She may or may not speed type her last few paragraphs.

She may or may not receive it back the next morning with way too many corrections, but she’d deal with that when it came).

“This yours?” Lena lifts a camera up. Kara nods as she shuts her laptop. “What’s your favourite thing to photograph?”

“I don’t have a favourite subject just… things that make me happy I guess? Things that make me stop in my tracks and think _that’s beautiful_.” Something that made her feel something. All she really wanted in life was to _feel_ something.

Lena flicks through. Smiling at pictures. Memories. Moments in Kara’s life, a chance to view the world as she sees it, the way she chose to see it. Kara doesn’t seem to see the issue with that until Lena halts, until she stares at her and she starts to worry what she may have forgotten was on there.

“This is me,” she says. She clicks through a few more, corrects herself. “ _These_ are of me.”

“You’re beautiful.” Kara shrugs. Sometimes things really were that simple. Sometimes truths really were that concrete. Sometimes Lena was beautiful, and Kara was powerless to the tide of feelings that washed over her.

“Not like a sunflower.” That was true she supposed. Kara thinks that if Lena were a flower, she’d be a hellebores. A flower built to bloom in winter. A plant that preferred to hide in the shadows, but that people couldn’t help but want to look upon. A plant much like the woman who did her best work behind the scenes, and put her bravest face on in front of them, so that no one could see the cracks in her façade, so that no one could see the true struggle beneath the surface.

A flower that came from a poisonous family. Lena was the odd one out. The one that nurtured instead of killed, the one that shone instead of faded.

(If Lena was a flower, Kara thinks she’d be a hellebores.

But she wasn’t a flower. She was more).

“No, not like a sunflower. Just like a sunflower isn’t like you. No two beautiful things are the same, not completely. There’s always something unique.”

“You think I’m unique?” Lena asks. Genuine and small. Kara had never thought that statement could be questioned, had never felt something to be truer in her mind. She supposed it was easier to find uniqueness in something you hadn’t spent your whole life staring in the mirror at, hadn’t spent your whole life picking apart bit by bit and judging without care for harm caused.

Kara looks at her. Really, truly looks at her, until Lena looks back in earnest. “I think there are fields full of sunflowers around the world but there’s only one of you, Lena Luthor.”

“Can I have a copy of this one?” Lena turns the camera. It’s a picture of her, Alex and Kelly, all bellyache laughing. Kara had never seen anything more beautiful, anything more carefree and perfect. She didn’t even know the joke that got them to that point. She half suspects it was the act of laughing itself that egged them on.

“I’ll get it printed.”

“Thank you.” Lena puts the camera down as carefully as she picked it up. “So, you were going to take me to the fortress?”

Kara’s trigger finger itches when they’re there. She wants to capture the wonder on Lena’s face when they open the database. She wants to capture the softness of her smile when she thanks Kara for trusting her back here. She wants to capture it all.

She takes a mental picture in her mind.

It’s not enough. Nothing less than living in her beauty forever would be enough.

(If only she could say that).


	18. garden

“You know I could just look straight through your hand?” Kara asks.

She’s mostly joking but it is also kind of a threat because she’s getting antsy, has been since the second Lena showed up on her doorstep and said she had a surprise for her but that she couldn’t peek. It got worse when she pulled Kara into a blacked-out car that she couldn’t look out of (stupid lead and stupid over-preparedness).

It got a little overshadowed when Lena said she didn’t have a blindfold and politely asked to put her hands over Kara’s eyes. It left her pressed tightly to Kara’s back, in a way that Kara could hear the slight tiptoe in her walk to get the right angle that she was desperately trying to imagine. It distracted her momentarily, trying to picture how adorable she looked in now well-worn sneakers.

“I know you could, but I also know you won’t because I asked so nicely and that would be rude.” It had been pretty nice - all tense shoulders and twisting fingers and shy eyes. Lena had put on a good show, a performance anyone else would have believed, but Kara wasn’t just anyone when it came to Lena. She’d looked close enough to see the signs of complete and utter panic and apprehension. She had her coat on before Lena had even finished her request.

“Are we almost there?”

Lena sighs lightly; it catches itself on a chuckle at the end. Regret and amusement fighting to win out in the forefront of the sound. It’s a sound she’s grown quite accustomed to being Lena’s friend (it’s one she tries to bring out as often as she possibly can). “Yes, Kara.”

“You also remember I can fly right?” Kara asks as they shift to ascend yet another flight of stairs. She wasn’t exactly winded from the activity, but it was getting a little difficult tilting her head at an odd angle to meet Lena’s hand and still maintaining her balance the whole way up. “Throwing me off a roof won’t exactly do much.”

“You’re so annoying,” Lena says, not really sounding annoyed by it at all. Kara likes the sound of that tone too. She likes all of Lena’s sounds. She’d gladly spend her life learning them all. “I really don’t know why I’ve done this for you.”

“It’s because I’m your favourite and you love me,” Kara jokes. Lena stumbles into her back. Even blind, Kara keeps them stable. There’s a pause where they don’t move again yet. Kara reaches behind her for Lena’s free hand, squeezes it. “You okay?”

Lena squeezes her hand back before letting go and pushing forward again. “Yeah, I just caught my foot on the final stair.”

Kara grins. “The final stair?”

“I said we were almost there.” Kara feels the breeze tumble through her hair. The smell of the city still lingering. The sound of people not too far even after all the stairs climbed. There’s a click and then warmth. Warmer than the day. A fresh, floral smell pricks the air; it’s both familiar and unfamiliar at once. “Okay, are you ready?”

“Have been since you said you had a surprise.” Kara can practically hear the eyeroll she receives but Lena takes her hand away anyway. Kara keeps her eyes closed for a second, tries one final guess as to what it is; she opens her eyes when she comes up blank. She doesn’t think any guess she made would have lived up to what it is.

“Do you like it? I’ve been working off some of Lex’s less psychotic notes on Krypton and what I could find in the fortress about Kryptonian florae. I’m not sure it’s quite right but I didn’t want to hide it from you any-“ Kara darts forward and kisses her cheek- “longer.” Lena’s blushing a little and she looks so pretty and everything around them in the greenhouse is beautiful.

It’s a spectrum of colour. Deep reds like desert sand and trickling blood. Fiery oranges like a sun ablaze, delicate oranges like a shifting sky. Glowing yellows like the moon on the horizon, electrifying ones like lightning sparking through the sky. Fresh greens and brilliant blues. Vibrant violets and impeccable indigos. A prismatic picture of iridescence that feels like a trip down memory lane (or maybe more like a sucker punch straight into the past).

Plants she never thought she’d see again. Flowers that felt like maybe she’d made them up in a dream that tried to mimic what she once knew.

“I feel like I’m there. This is...” Kara trails off. No words could describe what it meant. Flowers could say so much, they all had their own language, their own origin, stories and habitats and these were hers. They felt cut from the same cloth, born from the same stares, even if they were created from the atoms of this world.

“Only you and I can access this for now so it’s yours really. I’m just a caretaker.”

Kara pulls her eyes from the insanity in front of her to look at Lena. “You’ve never been _just_ anything in your life.”

“I- this one is my favourite.” Lena changes the subject, completely not smoothly. Kara lets her. Let’s her point out things and helps her pronounce the names of them all, tells her nicknames and folklores that come alongside them. Tells her which ones grew near her home, which one’s she’d only seen in pictures from across the planet. She showed her which ones she used to stare at in the photos from her parents wedding ceremony, which one’s her Aunt Astra used to bring to brighten her room when she told her stories of her adventures.

She lays out her life in plants, lays herself bare, and Lena listens – carefully and intently, like she had nowhere else to be, nothing else better to do than hear about a lost world and a found girl.

Kara starts visiting the greenhouse every day.

She never accepts the key Lena offers back. She doesn’t want to hold this on her shoulder’s alone. She likes the idea that someone else remembers, that someone else cares about it all, that someone else is building memories of things she never thought would exist again.

(She likes the idea that, that person is Lena).


	19. pumpkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probably jumped a bit here considering thanksgiving was a couple chaps ago and now it's pumpkins but time isn't real so who cares - it's gay, that's what matters

“She roped you into this too?” Lena turns to find Alex approaching the door to Kara’s building. She hands over one of the coffees from her tray thoughtlessly. Alex smiles thankfully before taking a sip and closing her eyes in ecstasy. “You never get the cheap roast, Luthor, and I love that about you. Unfortunately my sister already called dibs.”

“I know I’m new to this but I’m sure you can have two best friends.” Alex looks at her like she’s grown two heads. “What?”

“Nothing, I-“ Alex stops, shakes her head and plasters on a smile that still falls a little flat for being up so early on a Saturday- “I just haven’t booted my brain up properly yet. You know she told Kelly she was allowed a lie in and could meet us later?” Alex scoffs. “I was getting out of bed this morning like are you coming and she just turned over and said her and Kara had a deal that she didn’t have to turn up until ten.”

Lena pushes the button in the elevator and hits Alex with a look. “What happened to the field is its most perfect and untouched at sunrise and that it helped you to pick the happiest pumpkins?” Lena says it mockingly now, but she’d been endeared when the words came from Kara’s mouth. it was kind of hard to be anything but charmed when she looked so light and adorable and soft.

Alex rolls her eyes. “Apparently Kelly’s pumpkin will be happy whatever time of the day she chooses it.”

“I guess you can have her coffee too then.” Lena hands it over. Alex attempts to pour both cups into her mouth at once and… well she actually does it crazy perfectly. Obviously, Kara wasn’t the only Danvers sibling with a superpower.

“I can’t believe Kara is making us go to a pumpkin patch in September. They’re not even going to last until Halloween.” Lena is struck with a horrible thought. “Is she going to make us do this again?”

Alex laughs. “I really didn’t think it would faze you this much. Don’t you get up this time like every day to start work?”

“Not for manual labour.” Lena moans. It was usually boring paperwork that she dreaded or science that she enjoyed enough to forget she was tired. And yes, usually her body clock had her on a pretty tight five hour a night schedule that she was happy with, but Kara had been on at her about not sleeping enough recently so she’d messed up her schedule to start sleeping in until eight.

She’d pulled herself out of bed at five this morning to go buy coffee from her and Kara’s favourite place. She’d wondering a little if it was worth it. She takes a sip. Sighs. Maybe it was.

The lift doors open and they both push off from where they’re slumped against the wall. “Do you think I look pathetic enough that Kara will do everything for me?”

“I think Kara would happily show off for you,” Alex says. Lena doesn’t get a chance to ask what that means, doesn’t get a chance to ask why Alex keeps making comments like it, because Kara’s at the door before they even knock, bound in a muscle tee with a pumpkin on it and yoga pants that Lena won’t say made her ass look amazing (but they made her ass look amazing).

“You guys ready to _fall_ for some pumpkins.”

“That was awful.”

“That was really bad,” Alex and Lena say at the same time. Lena softens the blow of her own answer by handing over Kara’s iced latte. She smiles at the rattle of ice, takes a happy sip, any offence at the lack of enjoyment for her pun forgiven.

Kara sings the entire drive over to the patch. Alex knocks her sunglasses down from atop her head and naps after her first karaoke rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen finishes. Lena stares steadfastly out the window so she doesn’t stare at Kara. She smiles when she spots a familiar face waiting patiently at their destination. “Kelly?”

“Hey, guys.” Kelly pushes away from her car casually, taking a sip from a travel cup, looking far too put together.

“I thought you were sleeping in?” Alex asks, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“I tried to but the bed was really cold without you in it.” Alex blushes and grins. Lena feels her own mouth pull into a smile at how cute they were. Kelly slips her arm through Alex’s and leans into her side. “So should we go find our happiness?” She asks. Alex looks tired and in love as she nods dazedly and follows where Kelly leads.

“So how does one find the perfect pumpkin?” Lena asks when her and Kara are alone, after she's half listened to a man give a speech about how to properly pick a pumpkin and mostly watched Kara very seriously taking it all in. Now she's mostly just looking around the field a little lost as to where to start.

“You just feel it in your bones. You’ll look at it and think _that’s it, that’s the one_.” Lena knew the feeling (she hadn’t had it about a pumpkin).

“Clearly picking a pumpkin is far more spiritual than I ever thought.”

“It’s very serious business, Lena,” Kara assures. “Thank you for coming by the way. Usually it’s just me and Alex but I could tell she wanted to invite Kelly and I didn’t want to feel like a third wheel.”

“You’ve saved me enough times, I’m happy to return the favour.” Maybe it wasn’t the same as catching someone falling from a cliff, or a building, or a plane, but it would have to do (Lena really needed to make a note to stop plummeting from great heights for her own mental wellbeing).

Kara shrugs it off. “You’ve saved me just as many; this definitely puts me in your debt.”

“And what are you willing to do to pay it off?” Lena asks, toeing a line. Stepping into a zone she’d always sidestepped when it came to Kara, a zone she always stopped just outside when she felt like she was getting too close, when she felt like she was about to finally step into the territory that made Kara close off from her.

Kara’s eyes fall to her lips, flicker back up to her eyes. “Anyt-“

She trips. Like full on, bumps into a pumpkin, and falls face first into the dirt, trips.

“Kara, oh my god. Are you alright?” Lena bends down to check.

Kara turns her head just barely out of the dirt to say. “Leave me.”

“Is this a new technique to become one with the soil?” Lena jokes.

“Let’s go with that.” Kara sighs, standing herself up with Lena’s help and brushing the dirt off her front. She has a little smudged on her nose and Lena can’t deal with that right now. She couldn’t handle that right now. So, she does what she always does - deflects.

“I think I’ve found my one.”

“Ooh, where?” Lena points to the most misshapen, miscoloured one she can find. The kind of pumpkin no one looking for aesthetic was going to pick up. The kind of one that would be the last one left. “Lena that is the weirdest pumpkin I’ve ever seen.”

“You said I’d feel it in my bones and I do. I want that one.” Kara shakes her head but walks towards in anyway, pulling it out just like she was told by the bored and tired looking worker. She doesn’t even struggle. She seems to struggle even less when she picks her own one –the largest one in the patch and just throws it onto her shoulder with Lena’s in her other arm. She’s like some hot farmer.

(It really works on her. _Everything_ works on her).

“Are you trying to kill the unsuspecting citizens of the pumpkin patch?” Lena asks because she can’t hold it in, because if she wasn’t Kara’s friend and hadn’t been desensitised to it, she definitely would’ve passed out at the sight of her arms. She still might. Kara looks at her like she doesn’t even realise she’s essentially a Greek god. “Do you actually work out at all beyond pretending to be winded at spin class or are you just naturally this defined?”

Kara looks at her arms, flexing them almost naturally. Lena catches her whimper before Kara can hear it beneath her breath. “I just sort of… am. Um, you can, touch,“ Kara offers, rushing to add, “If you want.”

“Oh, um, yeah.” This was weird right? This was definitely weird. But she was also definitely going to do it. She runs her fingers across the obvious muscle on Kara’s arm holding her pumpkin, poised in a perfect flex. She follows the lines. Gets a grip on it and squeezes. Goosebumps erupt on Kara’s skin. Lena almost asks if she’s cold before she remembers Kara doesn’t get cold.

She should say something.

She should just say something.

(She doesn’t).


	20. game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the most vague prompt link yet. i have outdone myself

They’re obvious. They’re so obvious, except apparently, to one another.

Although, Alex wasn’t even so sure of that anymore. She was half of the mind that they were both completely aware of their own, and each other’s, feelings and were just choosing to pretend that they weren’t because change was hard, change was scary and change was something that was often easier when it was done to, not by, you.

But regardless of whether they knew it or not, it was getting a little ridiculous now. They constantly ate lunch together and slept over at each other’s apartments - in the same bed - and stared at one another a beat too long, every two or three beats of time. They were inseparable, and adorable, and nauseating and Alex couldn’t take much more of it or she might actually explode.

Like, even she, the woman who didn’t even know she was gay until a fiery cop came and metaphorically slapped her in the face with her own identity, could see it.

She doesn’t say anything though. She just watches and vaguely judges and hopes that they’ll figure it out for themselves. She doesn’t say anything. Until one day she decides she has to. Until one day they’re cleaning up after sister night and Alex thinks she’s about to leave anyway so she might as well pull the pin on the way out.

“When are you going to tell Lena you’re in love with her?” Kara smashes a plate in the sink. Maybe a grenade wasn’t her best choice of attack. Kara might have preferred the gentler band-aid approach. Probably would have resulted in a slightly less deer in headlights response.

Alex half expects her to shrug it off. There’s a pause in time where she expects she’ll be lifting the rug up as Kara sweeps the conversation beneath it. Instead Kara sighs and says, “I’ve been dropping hints and flirting with her for months.”

“Kara, you’re my sister, and I love you, but you need to hear me when I tell you you’re an idiot.”

Kara gapes. “Hey, what have I done?”

“You’ve ‘been dropping hints’?” Alex mocks. “This isn’t a game. You know better than anyone how fragile Lena is. She puts on a brave face and fixes everyone else’s problems so you won’t notice she’s buried in her own. Last week she missed an investor meeting to help Brainy prepare for a date with Nia. You don’t even want to know the figure deal she lost and that’s just one example.

“My point being – Lena may notice your flirting, she may notice differences and changes, but she’s not going to do anything at the risk that she’ll hurt you, at the risk that she’ll be another best friend in a long line of best friends who told you they loved you and made you uncomfortable.”

Kara’s quiet as she finishes off the last few dishes, dries her hands on the towel and folds it perfectly onto the counter. “I’m scared.”

Alex knows the look on her face. She’d felt that exact feeling herself, had felt it paint itself onto her face against her better attempts to keep herself a clean slate. She knows how big the mountain can look at the bottom. But Alex also knows what the view looks like at the top.

“I know. I had no idea what I was doing with Maggie. It was the first time I’d ever really loved anyone, ever really wanted to be with someone and I was terrified. And then I met Kelly and I was scared all over again – scared that I had someone who knew me, someone who wanted me, someone I could see my dream future with – but waiting around isn’t helping anyone. You’re only going to make yourself more scared.”

“What if she’s repulsed?”

Alex pins her with the most incredulous look she can muster. “She felt you up in a pumpkin patch."

“You saw that?” Kara blushes.

“Don’t deflect.”

Kara sighs, lifting herself onto the counter. It reminds Alex of the way she’d sit on the kitchen counter in Midvale, swinging her legs and telling Alex about her day, about the good and the bad, all the questions she had that she didn’t trust anyone else to answer. “How do I say it? How do you say 'I’m in love with you'?”

“The end part of that is a pretty good start. Not every declaration has to be a whole speech. Sometimes you just say it.”

“I might need a little longer.”

“There’s no countdown,“ Alex assures. “Just be wary that you’re not the only one in this.”

“I love you. You know that? I love how you care about Lena.”

“She’s a good egg and I still feel like I’ve got some making up to do from previous questioning of her cinnamon roll status.” It hadn’t been Alex’s finest hour.

It had stemmed from the feelings she could see written so plainly on Kara’s face – Kara who had one too many times ran into danger without thinking because she saw the good in someone. Alex had learned to see the bad to balance her out, to catch issues before they became real issues.

She’d searched for the bad in Lena and when she came up blank, she’d picked the bad parts of her family and subscribed her to the same beliefs. She’ll repeat, it hadn’t been her finest hour.

“She’s already forgiven you,” Kara points out.

“I know but I need to forgive me too.” Sometimes that was the most important part. Alex puts on her coat. Presses her lips to Kara’s forehead and starts her short walk to the door. “I love you too, by the way. See how easy that was to say?"

Kara pushes her out the door. “Bye Alex.” It closes on her face. She grins at the wood.

“Wait, actually, tell her how you looked into her eyes and saw her true self a week into meeting her!” She shouts through the door.

“Bye Alex!” Kara repeats. Alex laughs to herself as she leaves.

They really were hopeless.

(Alex still had hope).


	21. danvers

“Would you change your name if you got married?” Kara asks out of the blue.

Out of the blue for Lena that is, if the way she jumps a little is anything to go by. It’s as though she forgot Kara was typing at the coffee table in her office, forgot that her space was being occupied by someone else, that she had invited someone in her bubble so casually.

It wasn’t a very Lena thing, she supposed. Kara had seen her gently cajole people out of her lab, had seen her tell Alex her breathing was distracting, had watched her convince Brainy he needed to see Nia right that moment because she didn’t have the heart to so blankly say he was hovering.

But she never pushed Kara out. She pulled her in. Kara didn’t really know why she was the exception to the rule, but she was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Denise off again?” Lena asks instead of answering, continuing to focus her attention on the document in front of her. Kara had taken a peek when she came in – mostly financial documents, the kind she knew Lena found dull but looked over again and again because she was afraid of missing another Lex doing things under her nose.

“She’s finally going on her honeymoon. The Caribbean I think, or I know, because it’s all she’s said to anyone for like three months,” Kara supplies. 

“I’m surprised Andrea let you take her column again after last time.”

Kara smiles at the memory. “I wish I could’ve shown you her face when she stormed into my office to complain that it had already gone to print.”

Lena finally looks up at her, brow cocked but mouth pulling into a smile. “Kara, you did, you sent me a photograph and then complained that she shouted at you more.”

“Oh, yeah.” She shakes her head with laughter. “That was a good day. Shouting aside.”

“And you wonder why she tried to kill you,” Lena says casually. Kara gasps, affronted. Throws a pen at her from across the room, perfectly clipping Lena on the ear. She throws Kara an amused glare (always with the gentle qualifier before acts she usually threw expertly at other people with acidity).

“Would you change your name though?” Kara redirects.

“Not if their name was something embarrassing,“ Lena says, leaning back in her chair and resigning herself to taking a break with Kara. “The Luthor name may have some terrible connotations but at least it flows off the tongue nicely.”

“What about Danvers? Lena Danvers rolls off the tongue.” She shouldn’t have said that. Why did she say that? It was definitely true but also why did she say that?

Lena blushes. Finds her voice to joke, “Are you offering?”

“Oh I-“

“Relax, Kara, I’m kidding.” Lena lets her off lightly, cuts her off before her ramble really finds its footing. Maybe it’s more for her own benefit – limit the amount of her workday being monopolised by paragraphs that could’ve been single lines. “I’d take the Danvers name. I’d happily align myself with your family – you’re the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

Kara feels herself light up like a warm lamp in a sitting room gradually darkening from the day. “I’m glad you think that. You wouldn’t have to though; I’d absolutely be Kara Luthor. Then I could claim all the greatness when you return the name to its former glory.”

“You want to piggyback off my success?"

“Oh absolutely. That and your bank account.”

Lena smiles before catching her bottom lip between her teeth, vaguely dodging Kara’s eyes despite looking at her head on. “I don’t think the world is ready for you to look expensive everyday. We’d all implode.”

“If the earth can keep turning with you in that outfit, it can keep turning with me wearing monogrammed silk pyjamas.” Sometimes Kara thinks Lena plans her outfit based on how much it’ll make her brain implode.

_Do I want to make Kara feel like her eyes are melting today? Let’s make my shirt a little lower cut than usual. Want to see how long Kara can hold her breath? Pencil skirt and heels. Want to make Kara’s heart cliff dive? Trousers that look essentially painted on._

(A clothing item for every crush scenario.

She wears them all with unrivalled hotness).

“Don’t blame me when you kill us all,” Lena says. Kara grins. Looks back towards her work (which really means her blank document and many tabs open to mostly unhelpful websites). “I think we’d double barrel though. Luthor-Danvers has a nice ring to it.”

“Kara and Lena Luthor-Danvers,” she tests, powering through that part of her voice that almost embarrassingly catches in the middle of it. “I like that.”

“Keep proving your ambition and drive by finishing that article and it just might become a reality.”

“And what are you doing to prove yourself to me?”

“Keep an eye on your mailbox,” Lena says cryptically and Kara’s long since learned to just go along with that.

She simply shakes her head at the mystery and types her first word on her document - newly about the modern art of the double-barrel. Andrea could save her rant for someone else in the bullpen, she was being sensible this time (she would be flicking through her and Lena’s chat history for that picture though – she needed a good laugh to get her through the mid-way slump she was sure to have in the article process).

Kara spends the afternoon working alongside Lena in companionable silence.

She receives a package the next morning as she’s leaving for work - blue silk pyjamas with the initials KLD on the breast pocket. She goes back up to her apartment to put them on immediately, snapping a photo to send to Lena.

She receives a singular blue heart in response. It’s all she can think about all day. Lena is all she can think about all day. She really needed to do something about that.

(She meant it this time).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> narrator voice: but did she? did she really?


	22. whiskey

They got him. They’d finally got him, and he was back rotting in a prison cell like he should be. A prison with guards who hated him instead of letting him bribe them, a prison that would actually keep him locked in this time. Kara didn’t want to spiral too much, but she couldn’t wait to watch him rot in there for what he’d done. To all of National City. To Metropolis. To Lena.

Sometimes, in her darker moments, Kara wished much worse for him.

Sometimes, she wonders what the world would be like if she followed through.

Kara’s not been talking about it because it’s obvious Lena doesn’t want to. They’ve been not talking about it for weeks.

There’s an unspoken conversation in the air that says it’s too late for Lena to go home, that she shouldn’t have to be alone before all this, that she’ll spend the night at Kara’s, in Kara’s bed (in Kara’s arms about halfway through the night when they gravitate towards one another despite promising themselves they won’t).

But before then, now, there has to be a spoken conversation. As much for Kara as for Lena in the face of what’s to come. They’ll both have to be on the stand tomorrow. They’ll both have to look him in the eye and listen to his vitriolic words, wonder whether J’onn’s mind wipe will stick or if it’ll all come crumbling down in a courtroom filled with people hoping for the gossip of the century.

“How are you feeling about the trial? I know how hard it was for you the first time. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to go through it again.” Kara remembers watching it on the news the first time. She remembers Clark telling her not to and putting it on became an act of rebellion.

She remembers how sad Lena looked on the stand. Not outwardly. Her face was stone cold, her posture perfect but there was this look in her eye. The look of someone who had lost her family for a second time, lost someone she’d looked up to again.

Kara remembers them showing the footage again when Lena came to the city. Like they enjoyed rubbing salt in the wound, like they enjoyed the thought that she would have to change the channel from them, like even that was too close to be associated with her. She remembers hating it.

Lena’s quiet for a second. Then she says, “Did I ever tell you about my cat?”

“You had a cat?”

Lena smiles weakly. “His name was Whiskey. He was my first real friend and when Lionel came to pick me up after… _after_ he made me give him away because Lex was allergic,“ Lena says monotonously. “My entire life has been determined by Lex. His choices, his wants, his mistakes. I can’t wait to be rid of him – for real this time. No more emotional manipulation, no more guilt, none of it. When the trial is over, I’m done. And I’m getting a cat.”

“I’m proud of you.” It doesn’t feel like enough to explain the fact that Kara had spent four hours the night before staring at her ceiling and wondering how Lena overcame so much, how she wasn’t defined by it, how she refused to be corrupted by it. 

It doesn’t feel like enough to explain that Kara wants to tell everyone that Lena is her friend – her colleagues, her favourite barista, random people she passes on the street. Everyone. It doesn’t feel like enough to explain that every time Lena thinks up something new, or makes a board member cry, or breathes, Kara feels like a flower in just the right soil, with just the right amount of water, the perfect amount of sunlight - limitless.

“And I’m definitely coming with you to pick a cat,” Kara adds. Any excuse to pet adorable animals, whilst also seeing how adorable Lena looks next to said adorable animals.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else by my side. For either thing.” Lena drops her hand into the already narrow space between them.

Kara drops her hand atop it. “I’ll go wherever you go,” she promises.

“Even into the shower?” Kara should’ve seen the deflection coming. She should have prepared herself. Except maybe the thought of _that_ wasn’t something you could really prepare for.

Maybe there wasn’t a soul on earth that would know how to not let their brain start a fire drill at the thought of Lena Luthor - wet, dripping, running her hands across smooth skin.

(Maybe you just had to roll with it.

Kara decides she has to just roll with it).

She pushes her fingers between Lena’s, drags her thumb across the back of her hand. “If you asked nicely.”

Lena’s fingers flinch instinctively. Kara hears her heartbeat pick up speed, racing off a packed city street and straight onto the open highway. “And what do you categorise as nicely, Kara Danvers?”

“You-“

The door rattles, knocks. “Kara! Lena! Open the door and stop moping.”

Lena groans, drops her head to Kara’s shoulder. “Your sister has great timing.”

“We should table this.”

“We both know we won’t,” Lena says under her breath as Kara walks towards the door. She’s right. Kara knows she’s right.

She wants to tell herself they will. She wants to tell herself that she’ll make them finish that train of thought. But Lena’s right.

In the cold light of day, she’ll chicken out again. She’ll think better of the part of her that wants to throw caution to the wind. And she doesn’t even know why. She knows she’ll blame it on it not being the right time after everything with Lex. She knows she’ll tell herself she’s being thoughtful, and careful, and sensible, not falling into the heat of the moment.

She knows every single one of those will simply be an excuse.

(She knows something is there).

(She knows Lena knows it too).


	23. undress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not with my computer for a couple days so lucky for y'all you can have several of these at once - enjoy!!

Alex almost dies.

Kara can’t really even move even when she’s safe. She looks so broken and scared. Lena talks but it’s like Kara can’t even hear. There’s blood in her hair and on her hands and staining her suit and none of it is hers. Lena knows that logically but all she can see is red and then she thinks about Alex and…

She can’t think about it.

She needed to be strong for Kara. She needed to be the strong one. She could carry the weight of the world for a while.

She doesn’t try to get Kara to talk. She knows it won’t work. Kara’s been unresponsive since they brought Alex in. Even when the doctor’s said she would be fine – all she did was hum, tears trickling soblessly from her eyes.

Lena selfishly thinks she doesn’t want to hear Kara speak right now anyway – doesn’t want to expect her sunny tone and warm syllables and find nothing but melancholy. She doesn’t want to close her eyes when she eventually finds sleep and hear it paired with the sight of Alex…

She can’t think about it.

She runs a bath. Drops in every bubble bath she can find in Kara’s cabinet. Lights candles just to waste some more time. She leads Kara into the bathroom, meaning to leave once she’s in there. Kara doesn’t move. She just stares at it, stock still. She’s barely breathing. Lena’s not actually convinced she’s breathing at all.

Even her reflexes froze in the face of losing the thing she loved the most.

“May I take off your suit?” Kara doesn’t look at her, but she nods ever so slightly.

Lena knows there’s an easier way to do this, knows that Kara can make her suit turn into glasses in a second. Brainy had made it well, but she doesn’t want that. She needs the suit gone, really gone. She knows Kara does too. She peels it off her shoulders and down her arms, slips it down Kara’s legs. Lifts her feet one by one to remove the boots and pull the trousers off.

She waits for another nod before she unclips Kara’s bra, slides her underwear down her legs and into the pile of clothes in her arms. She keeps her eyes on Kara’s the entire time. They never gaze back at her. Kara still doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t cover herself up or shy away. She stands. Hands hanging limply by her side. Shoulders sagged and chin downturned.

“I’m just going to put this in the wash okay? You can get in and I’ll be right back.” Lena doesn’t wait for Kara to say anything. Isn’t under the impression she will.

When the machine is spinning and Lena comes back, Kara still hasn’t moved an inch, even with the goosebumps pimpling at her skin and the inviting warmth of the steam from the bath. It’s filled with Kara’s favourite bubbles; the ones she says are like sinking into cotton candy.

Lena never thought that sounded very appealing.

She’d get in herself right now to prove to Kara it was worth it.

“Can I take your hand?” Kara doesn’t say anything but slips her hand into Lena’s. She allows herself to be lead in. Slips into the water with barely a ripple on the surface. Lena gently washes her hair. Rids her of the blood. Scrubs at her nails with a brush. Delicately wipes over her skin with a sponge until the water is a little pink but Kara looks back to normal.

Lena doesn’t make her get out immediately once she’s done. The water’s still warm. Kara’s still unresponsive. She just sits at the side of the bath. One hand on the edge in case Kara wants to take it. She does after five minutes of silence with no more splashes of water to cover up the wordless air.

It’s not until she’s submerged herself to the point that only her head pokes above the water, slightly obscured by steam still rising that she speaks. “I really thought that was it this time.”

“But it wasn’t.” It’s a reminder for both of them. Alex had held their hands. There were tubes and frustrating beeps and the smell of disinfectant, but she had held their hands. She wasn’t…

She can’t think about it.

“I don’t know how to live without Alex.” A sob slips from Kara’s mouth. She blocks any further ones with her hand. Lena’s never seen a bond so unbreakable as between them. Alex had been in Kara’s life since she started her new one. She’d been her protector, her defender, her confidante.

She’d helped her learn to ride a bike and worked with her to figure out how to speak an entirely new language without sounding like a grandmother. She practised spelling with her. Was the first person Kara called after she went on a date for the first time (and before as a pep talk).

Alex made herself into whatever Kara needed.

Kara would never not need her.

“You don’t have to.”

“I think I would tear the world apart if I lost her.”

“I’d help,” Lena promises. She means it. After all they’d been through, after everything, after Alex apologising in any way she could think of – Lena trusted few people more than her, loved few people more than her. She thinks she finally understands what it means to have a sibling.

Kara finally looks at her. “You won’t leave me will you?”

“Of course not.“ Lena starts mentally cataloguing the things she’s left behind in Kara’s apartment, on purpose or by accident. “I think I still have some pyjamas here I can-”

Kara cuts in, “I don’t just mean tonight.”

“Not if I can help it.” It would take an unstoppable force to pull Lena from Kara now. She’d bypassed every fear she had. She’d laid herself bare. She’d shown every questionable part of herself and Kara had learned to care for it all, love it all, respect it all. She doesn’t think she’d ever find someone like that again. She wasn’t going to give that up.

And frankly she refused to die before she’d at least semi-confessed her feelings to Kara – beyond I think you’re hot, beyond trivialities, all the way to the point where Lena outlines how she’s been in love with Kara since a month after she met her. She wants to say she’s loved her since she met her, but it wasn’t quite love then. It was more of a ‘oh hey, it’s you, it’s always going to be you’.

The last time she’d visited japan she’d read the term koi no yokan. A premonition of love. The concept that to love a particular person was inevitable. She’d never felt so connected to something before that, never felt so connected to someone before Kara.

“Good. I’d tear the world apart for you too,” Kara vows. Lena nods.

She doesn’t sleep that night. She closes her eyes right as Kara’s open in the morning and pretends it’s the best sleep she’s ever had in her life. She has a feeling Kara fakes it the whole time beside her.

She’s glad they were together.

She doesn’t even want to think about the alternative.

(She can’t think about it).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's all about the emotional trauma and comfort


	24. cold

Kara’s avoiding Lena. She is. She won’t deny it. Well, she will, to other people. She definitely already has like three times today. But to herself she could be honest; to herself she could admit that she was definitely, one hundred percent avoiding Lena.

Dodging, evading, sidestepping. Whatever you wanted to call it, Kara was doing it, but she had a completely and totally valid reason for it.

Lena had a cold.

Lena had a cold and somehow it had made her even more mind-numbingly attractive and tactile - a dangerous combination that Kara couldn’t handle right now. Not when she was in the middle of trying to figure out the real way to tell Lena she liked her, not the way that had her spewing some nonsense about how sexy her croaky voice was.

She thought she’d become immune to it by now, or not immune, but at least semi-desensitised. She’d had years to achieve it. Literal years. But apparently Lena’s immune system fails her one time and Kara barricades herself in her apartment and pretends she’s so busy with work and Supergirl duties that she can’t answer her phone.

Which is a stupid excuse because usually she’s messaging Lena mid-fight and begging her to stop doing her own work to talk to her because she wants a distraction. Which is also really to say that Lena must know something is up.

Which is mostly all just a build up for the fact that Kara doesn’t expect to be able to hide forever, she expects Lena to use the key she gave her to her apartment and waltz her beautiful, sick face in and demand Kara stop being weird (even if she has no idea why she’s being weird).

Case in point. “Kara, are you in there?” Kara briefly debates the merits of jumping out the window. She briefly wonders when she became such an idiot. “I’m not going to let myself in if you don’t want me there but also know that it is incredibly rude to leave a sick woman standing at your door to be looked at weirdly by your neighbours… _Hi Mrs Richardson_.”

Kara races across the room and opens the door, waves at Mrs Richardson who seems to have no real reason to be standing at her door other than the vague hope of drama being delivered in the hallway. She seemed to have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. “Come in.”

“So you’re saying all I had to do to get you to respond to me finally was threaten you with your neighbours?” Lena jokes, though her arms cross over her chest and there’s an underlying hint of something Kara can’t quite pinpoint.

“I’ve been busy,” she tries.

“We both know that’s not the reason but if you don’t want to tell me, I’m not going to force you. I’d just like for you to not continue doing it anymore. I missed you.” Lena shrugs. She looks so cute - her nose a little red from rubbing it with the tissue tucked into her sleeve. Her eyes a little dazed. Her cheeks flushed. Her hair slapped up into a messy bun and her neck a little sweaty, a few stray baby hairs sticking to it. Kara thinks she hasn’t seen anyone look so beautiful in her life.

It’s how she knows this isn’t just a crush.

It’s how she knows she can’t just sit and wait for this to go away. One day when she questioned if telling James she just wanted to be friends was the wrong call, she saw him before he’d shaved his moustache and knew it was the right choice. She once watched a boyfriend in college eat a sandwich a particular way and dumped him two days later.

She’d lost crushes in seconds, crushed lust in minutes, moved on in mere moments, all from the most trivial things she could think of.

This wasn’t a passing fancy.

That’s the thought that spooked Kara into her apartment.

She sucks it up though because it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that she knows every thought in her head and all Lena sees is a closed door and a one-sided message thread. She pulls Lena into a hug, rubs her back gently and breathes in the smell of Lena’s soap as she tucks herself into Kara’s chest, accepting her warmth without further comment.

“No more avoiding. I promise.”

“Pinky?” Lena doesn’t untuck herself, just withdraws one arm from around Kara’s waist and offers her hand between the two of them. Kara chuckles lowly but catches it. “Someone I trust very much once told me that they’re binding.” Kara can picture the smile on Lena’s face highlighted by the silver sliver of the moon when she made her do her first pinky swear of her adult life.

It’d been their thing since then.

“They sound really smart.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes she can be incredibly dumb. But I like her anyway."

Kara presses a kiss to the top of Lena’s head (she was allowed to slip sometimes). “I’m sure she’s grateful for that.”

“Will you tell me sometime?” Lena says after a prolonged period of silence where it seems apparent neither of them plans to detach from one another or move more than five feet away from the door. Kara hums curiously. Lena elaborates, “Why you were avoiding me?”

Kara doesn’t want to lie. It’s part of the reason she was avoiding Lena in the first place. She didn’t have to lie if Lena didn’t ask. She doesn’t want to lie to Lena anymore, doesn’t want to betray her trust, or hurt her.

But she’s terrified of the truth. She knows what happened between them the last time she told the truth. And logically, sure, she knew it wasn’t the same, but the anxious swell in her stomach didn’t subscribe to logic.

Kara doesn’t want to lie. “Would you believe me if I said you looked so pretty with a runny nose that I panicked?”

Lena tuts. “You don’t have to mock me, Kara.”

“You’re right, sorry.” Kara sighs. Hugs Lena a little tighter before either of them thinks better of the situation. “I’ll tell you some day. For now though can we just watch cringe shows? That was always Alex’s favourite thing to do when she was sick.”

Lena moans. Kara’s arms tighten for an entirely different reason. _Note to self: don’t get Lena excited about anything and also don’t think about the connotations of the word excited off the back of that note._ “That sounds amazing.”

“Go get comfy then. I’ll make you some tea.” Every time Lena talks, Kara still melts at the husk and every time she snuggles closer her heart lurches and Kara thinks she’s beautiful, and hot, and soft and she wants nothing more than to kiss her.

She really, really just wants to kiss her.

(But not like this.

Lena deserves better than this).


	25. day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate title: time is hard to kill since i met you (little numbers - boy)

She thinks she’s lived this day before.

Lena doesn’t think anything of it when she first wakes up. Doesn’t notice the same exact time is displayed on her alarm clock or that she’s not in the shirt she remembers putting on for bed the night before.

She doesn’t think about the fact that she hears the same shout on the street outside her apartment, puts the same flicker of her apartment lights to that moment when you can’t remember if you were just blinking or if everything really went dark.

It was a pretty normal morning as morning’s went. It’s not until Kara meets her outside her apartment building with a coffee and an offer to walk together to work that she realises something is up. Mostly because when Kara offers her the cup, a kid rushing by on a skateboard knocks it straight out of her hand and onto the sidewalk.

“I can get you another one?” Kara offers. Lena shakes her head. Shakes it again. The day remains the same. Too the same.

“It’s fine. Come on, charmer, walk me to my meeting,” she repeats. Kara mock bows and offers her arm up. Lena rolls her eyes but takes it. _Retakes it._ This was weird.

The rest of the day follows the same route. She watches the same man trip in the lobby, spilling all his documents on the floor. She watches the same man help him pick them all up, blushing the entire time like he’s got a crush in a teen movie.

Jess tells her the same schedule. The same overconfident businessman makes her a pitch she cares even less about the second time around. She eats the same lunch whilst watching the news. There’s a mishap in the lab at precisely four minutes past three once again.

It’s weird. She tells herself it’s just the usual oddness of National City. She tells herself it’s nothing but a lack of sleep. She tells herself it’s just odd déjà vu. She’ll wake up tomorrow and everything will be back to normal.

It’s not.

There’s a shout outside her apartment. Her lights flicker- she knows it’s not just an ill-timed blink. Kara meets her outside her apartment, Lena pulls her out of the way of the skateboard menace, takes her coffee with a simple thank you and sips it in delight (it’s a shame she didn’t get to have it the first two times). She watches the man trip. The blushing. Listens to her schedule, listens to the tedious man, listens to the same news. Her salad is just as boring. She gets a call from the lab at exactly four minutes past three.

Lena freaks out. Goes to sleep. Begs to wake up on a different day.

She doesn’t.

She fixes things one by one. No skateboarding collision. Stops the man from falling (lets him fall again so he can flirt with his crush). Makes Jess cancel the meeting she doesn’t want. Eats a burger for lunch – she really wants a milkshake, but the machine is broken. Goes to the lab at two and asks to see their progress to figure out the issue that leads to the almost explosion. Fixes it.

It doesn’t fix the loop.

She tries telling Kara what’s happening. Tells Alex, Brainy, Nia, Kelly. Tells her doorman who asks if she needs him to call the hospital. None of them believe her. They all laugh it off in a way that doesn’t seem at all like them.

(She tries to get a milkshake every day. The machine never works).

She gets a little disillusioned.

She starts being reckless.

1.

She starts the day the same. Bang. Flicker. Greet Kara. Save them both from the skateboard of doom but then, “Should we just skip work today?”

“Are you feeling alright?” Kara asks, pressing the back of her hand to Lena’s head and clearly wondering how Lena was suddenly the one pushing to skip work. It was usually her job to drag Lena back out at the end of the day that should’ve ended far sooner.

“I’m fine, I just feel like nothing new is going to happen today.” Not unless she made it. “I’m not really missing anything.” Except the regular passage of time. She really missed that. Wouldn’t hate if that came back.

Kara eyes her for a second before smiling. “Well you don’t have to ask me twice. Andrea kept trying to ask me about you yesterday and it was weird.”

“What was she asking?” Lena asks, slipping her arm through Kara’s and directing her back inside her building.

“How long we’d been friends, except she kept saying _friends_ in this really sinister way.” Lena knows the tone Kara means. Though she would call it more suggestive than sinister. It could be a little hard with Andrea. Especially considering the foot her and Kara got off on – even if things were better now (now it tended to be Kara antagonising Andrea with more and more ridiculous pitches that got way too many hits to say no to when she forced Kara onto puff pieces).

“She’s always been a little nosy.”

“Yeah,” Kara agrees. “So… what did you want to do today?”

“Bake a cake?”

“Chocolate?” Kara asks with puppy dog eyes as though Lena needed any more persuading than her just asking in the first place.

Lena hums, “To begin with.”

“To begin with? This is the best day ever.”

It is a pretty amazing day. Lena falls asleep with Kara by her side.

She wakes up in her bed alone. Bang. Flicker. Everything is the same.

2.

Bang. Flicker. Coffee. Skateboard.

“I love you,” Lena says in way of greeting as coffee soaks into her shoes. It’s a relief to say it. She doesn’t wait for an answer, just walks back into her apartment and spends the rest of the day reading a book she never had time to get around to before.

3.

Bang. Flicker. Coffee. Avoid skateboard. Flying files. Invite Kara to her office for her boring lunch.

Kara smiles her disarming smile when she shows up. Offers Lena a doughnut with the apology that the milkshake machine at Big Belly was broken so she couldn’t get Lena her favourite.

Kara eats three burgers without taking a breath. Lena almost kisses her. Is a hairsbreadth away from what she wants when she realises how wrong it all is. How unfair. To both of them. “I can’t.” She says but she doesn’t pull away.

Kara goes a little cross-eyed flickering between her lips and her eyes. “Why not?”

“Because you won’t remember it.” Lena leaves Kara sat alone in her office. She doesn’t go back for the rest of the day. She figures out the formula to the prototype she’s been working on the rest of that day. It won’t be on the board when she wakes up, but she’ll keep writing it until it sticks.

She falls asleep in the lab. Wakes up in bed.

4.

Bang. Flicker.

She doesn’t get out of bed. Texts Kara to let herself in through the balcony.

They spend the day in bed watching films Kara always begged Lena to watch with her.

She falls asleep in Kara’s arms, wakes up cold.

5.

Bang. Flicker. Coffee. Skateboard. Flying files. Writing new formula on lab board. Boring meeting. Boring lunch. She flicks off her heels, spins round on her chair until she’s too dizzy to focus. A flash of blonde comes into vision. Even in blur form, Kara makes her heart leap.

“Hello, Supergirl.”

“Hello, Miss Luthor. You look like you’re really hard at work.”

Lena shrugs. It makes the world tilt. “I’ll do what I need to do tomorrow.”

“Well then, for today, would you like to watch the sunset with me? It’s really something when you can float above the city.”

“Sure. I imagine I can’t die anyway.”

“Of course not! I’d never drop you.” Lena smiles, shakes her head and steps her way into Kara’s arms. The sunset is beautiful. Kara’s more so. Lena allows herself a kiss on her cheek. Kara startles, her grip slackens briefly before tightening more. A sunset blooms on her cheeks. Lena prefers that one.

Lena goes to sleep with a smile on her face.

She wakes up in… a place she doesn’t know.

She wakes up plugged into some beeping machine with Kara clutching her to her chest, saying her name over and over. Alex seems to be carting some man she doesn’t recognise from what she can see over Kara’s shaking shoulders.

“Oh, hey, are you crying?” She asks stupidly, wrapping her arms around Kara less stupidly.

“I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t-“ Kara breaks off, takes three stuttering breaths before she catches the wave of a deep breath. “I couldn’t hear your heartbeat anymore when I was flying around. I’m sorry it took me so long. Stupid lead.”

“How long has it been?”

“A little under a day.”

“A day?! I’ve been in a time loop for weeks.” Weeks. Weeks of the same boringly tedious day. Well, mostly boringly tedious, some of it wasn’t so bad.

“A time loop of what?” Kara asks. She doesn’t let go. Lena can feel her matching her breaths to the cycle of Lena’s heartbeat. In. Boom boom. Out. Boom boom. In. Boom boom- it’s calming.

“Just a regular day. Yesterday I think. With the skateboarder who-“

“Spilled coffee all over our shoes,” Kara completes. “That did happen. Only once though. I haven’t seen you since then.”

Lena eyes the machine next to the bed she’s on. Even from a first look it’s impressive - incredibly complex for a machine that looks like it’s built from spare parts. She can’t even fathom how long it would’ve taken to scavenge it all, let alone figure out how to get it to work this well.

The machine makes a subtle bang.

The lights in the room flicker.

Lena chuckles humourlessly. “So it was programmed off my memory?”

“It seems that way. We’ll have to test it. I think he used some Obsidian tech, there are multiple files running though. It looks like he’d been gathering data from all of us to make sure we’d react the way we normally would, to make you believe you really were in a time loop and not some weird virtual reality projection.” React the way we normally would? React the way they would? But that meant that Kara…

“It’s been a long day,“ Lena jokes. Too long to think about what it all meant right now. “But I’m really dying for a milkshake if you want to grab one?”

“I’d love that.” Kara grins.

(The milkshake machine at Big Belly Burger works.

Lena almost cries).


	26. diamond

Kara has a ring.

Rephrase – Kara has Alex’s ring. Rephrase again – Alex’s ring for Kelly. She’d helped her pick it out. Had walked from store to store for weeks as Alex deemed every ring not quite good enough (Kara thinks the indecisiveness was more about fear than anything else - they ended up back with the first ring they went to go see).

Alex had bought the ring, and planned a speech, and told Kara every adorable thing she thought about Kelly but usually felt too awkward saying without blushing.

And then she’d freaked out because she didn’t really have a plan (Kara knew the feeling). Which is how Kara ended up with the ring in her care so Kelly couldn’t find it accidentally or Alex couldn’t just propose on a whim out of fear or exasperation.

Kara was trusted with Alex’s ring. So, it’s a little awkward when it drops right out of her pocket and she has to scramble around on the floor to pull it back out from under a cabinet in Lena’s office.

She’s mostly just mentally cheering when she turns with the ring in her hand, still on one knee on the floor. She doesn’t have time to think about the position on top of her overwhelming thankfulness she didn’t drop it somewhere worse.

She’s incredibly too aware of the position when Lena turns, sees her on the floor and smirks. “Might be a little fast there, Kara.”

“Oh, I-“ Kara stops. Thinks about it. Thinks about it a little too much. Lena in a white dress, a veil. Walking towards her down the aisle. Palms sweating. Heart stopping. “It’s for Kelly.”

“Alex might have something to say about that.”

Kara rolls her eyes. “I don’t know how you ever call me annoying when you do this.”

“You love it really.” Lena winks. “Can I see it?” Kara doesn’t know why her brain translates that to ‘can I see it on’ but it does. She holds Lena’s hand and slides it onto her ring finger. She looks at her hand the whole time, an oddly pretty amazing fit.

She doesn’t notice Lena’s looking at her until she looks up to ask what she thinks and finds her eyes steadfastly on Kara. She looks a little like she’s not breathing. Kara stops in sympathy.

“You just meant look at it, didn’t you?” Kara asks self-consciously. Kara- zero: English Language - one.

“This is good too,” Lena says and then, “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but you have very soft hands but also these little calluses I never expected considering you’re unbreakable round these parts.” Lena runs her fingers across them as if to illustrate her point. The feeling springs up Kara’s arms and trickles down her spine like honey until she can feel it from her head to her toes.

Lena was all encompassing like that.

“They’re from before. I used to be a lot like you, always tinkering, experimenting. I was the youngest person ever to be accepted into Science Guild on Krypton. It was kind of a huge deal. It felt a lot like cheating when I got here so I stuck to things I had to learn right alongside everyone else.”

“That’s why journalism,” Lena says like it all makes sense finally.

“That and I like people.”

Lena smiles softly. “Well the ring is lovely. I think Kelly will love it.”

“It suits you.”

“Everything suits these hands.”

Kara throws her head back to laugh. “I won’t argue with that.”

“I should probably take it off though, before Jess walks in and gets the wrong idea. She’s still half convinced we’ve been dating this whole time. I can’t take any more knowing looks.”

“Jess thinks we’re dating?” Jess who spent more time with Lena than most people. Jess who knew more about what Lena liked and disliked than most people. Jess who had seen what Lena’s type was waltz in and out of her life through years of being her assistant. That Jess.

That Jess thought they were dating. That Jess thought it was feasible. That Jess didn’t give Kara evils when she came to visit Lena so also definitely approved of their not-relationship.

“Apparently if we’re platonic, she’s white. Her words not mine.”

“And Jess doesn’t think that’s weird?” Kara asks, the clarifies. “That you would want to be with me, I mean?”

“Why would that be weird? You’re a catch. Pretty much the entire building is in love with you. The fourth floor has a bet going to see who can talk to you the most times in a month. I hear the whispering about it on the elevator sometimes.”

That… actually made a lot of sense. “I thought Lonnie was asking me about the weather a lot recently.” At first Kara thought it was some kind of hint that she knew Kara was seeing the weather more up close and personal than most. Clearly that wasn't quite the case.

“By any means, I’d be incredibly lucky if you wanted to put a ring on my finger,” Lena says and then, right before Kara’s mind can take any chapel field trips, she adds, in what Kara assumes is a brush off of the moment, “Anyone would.”

Kara lets her - mostly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Come on, let’s go to lunch.”

“Lena,” Kara says with an underpinning of laughter. Lena stops collecting her things, gives Kara her full attention. “You might want to actually take it off before your office, and half of National City, starts gossiping, and Kelly sees her ring plastered on the front of CatCo.”

“Good thinking.” Lena pulls it off and hands it over. Kara doesn’t know why it feels so horrible.

She moves on when Lena slips her arm into the crook of hers and tells her all about the restaurant she’s taking her to - how she’d been looking at the menu all week to make sure it had all of Kara’s favourite things.

All Kara can think is that she’s the lucky one that Lena cares about her. 

(No more excuses).


	27. desk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back to our regularly scheduled programming because apparently the confines of daily posting is like 80% of y'all's impulse control

She can’t even look at it. The desk. Her brain seemed to be telling her that the more she resisted her feelings, the more she kept them in when they were begging to come out, the more it would taunt her – with flashes of thought, and sparks of ideas, and torrents of dreams.

Dreams.

Dreams of Lena. Dreams of her and Lena. Dreams of her and Lena and the desk. Kara with Lena bent over the desk.

_The desk. The desk. The desk._

“-my boobs.” Kara zones in.

“Huh?”

Lena chuckles lowly. “Where’s your mind?”

“Nowhere. Here. It’s here. Sorry.”

“So long as you’re okay?” Lena asks. Kara nods, smiles, it takes a second to form but it shines when it hits. It’s enough for Lena to nod back. “Let me just grab the things from my desk then and we can go to Alex’s.”

_My desk. My desk. My desk_.

“Sure, no rush,” Kara says. There was a slight rush. A rush of blood between Kara’s ears. A rush of her heart in her chest. A rush of heat swirling in the pit of her stomach as Lena leans over her desk to grab something. One hand gripping the edge, knuckles turning white with every passing second. Her body half lying on the metal. Her toes pushing off the ground, her ass pushing into the air and Kara behind thinking fuck.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

“ _Fuck_.” Okay that one slipped out for real. Lena turns her head, looks at her from over her shoulder, still bent over the desk. Her trousers and Kara’s chest tightening with the stretch. Apparently, Kryptonite wasn’t the only thing that made her vulnerable these days.

“You just swore again,” she says, shocked.

“It’s not that rare.” Kara wasn’t some kind of nun. She swore sometimes. Not always verbally so much. She remembers when she first came to earth, and Alex had thought it would be funny to tell Kara swearwords but lie about their meanings so she would go around saying them all.

She’d gotten herself into a lot of trouble, very quickly. Their old elderly neighbour wouldn’t look Kara in eye for like four years. She’d been given detention every day for a week. It had somewhat scarred her into her adult life and she still found herself avoiding them. But she didn’t have a problem with them - she just usually reflexively kept them in her mind voice.

Lena scoffs incredulously. “Kara, we’ve spent countless hours together, but I can count the amount of times you’ve sworn on one hand.” Lena stands up properly again (Kara’s brain starts firing on another cylinder). She looks as though she’s ready to count them out on her hand in front of Kara to prove her point. Kara doesn’t want to have to sit with the memory of the last time she swore in front of Lena, doesn’t want to have to imagine Lena with blood trickling down her face again.

“Well you’ve obviously not caught me in the right situations.” Those right situations being her overactive imagination finally taking things a step too far.

“Guess I’ll have to try harder,” Lena says and then goes right back to leaning over desk like she knows exactly why Kara’s ears are so red and her voice is pitched a little too high with every word she says. “Have you seen my favourite pen?” She asks. Kara uses the excuse to force herself to look at anywhere other than Lena’s ass.

“It’s on the coffee table,” she offers when she sees it. It’s the one Kara got her for Christmas last year as a last-minute panic present. She doesn’t know why Lena loves it so much, but she wasn’t going to complain that she got away with it.

“Thanks.” Lena smiles as she passes her, winks and then she’s bending in a way that’s definitely deliberate, in a way that’s definitely supposed to provoke Kara. It does. It really does and it’s what she blames for what she does next.

The bend and her dream meet in the middle of terrible ideas and horrifyingly embarrassing acts and Kara... she smacks Lena’s ass. Fully smacks her ass.

And yes, the impact is satisfying. And yes, the whimper that rips out of Lena’s mouth before she claps a hand over it is the best thing Kara’s ever heard. And yes, she kind of itches to immediately do it again.

But it’s also the worst thing to ever happen in her life (and a lot of terrible things had happened to her in her life).

“I am so sorry.”

“I liked it!” Lena blurts. Then breathes deeply in through her nose. “I meant to say it’s fine.”

“I didn’t mean to actually…” smack your ass in the cold light (it was evening) of a random Friday in your office. Gosh she couldn’t even say that out loud. She could still feel a phantom sting in her hand. “I think I actually hear someone calling for Sup-“

“Kara,” Lena threatens simply. Kara’s excuse falls flat.

“Lena, I…” _don’t know where I was actually going with that sentence? Don’t know what to do now I’ve started it? Especially don’t know what to do now that I’ve slapped your ass and probably left a handprint._

_A handprint. A handprint. A handprint._

“What if I asked you to do it again?” Lena asks. Kara almost swallows her tongue. Lena steps closer. “What if I asked you to do it harder?” She presses. She’s clearly not done. She takes another step. “What if I wanted you to do it hard enough that I couldn’t quite sit on it all night?”

“Lena, I…” Kara tries again. Her voice scratches from her throat like sandpaper. “ _Fuck,_ _Lena_.” She settles on. Her hands grip Lena’s waist, pull her closer, before they start dripping down her body like raindrops racing on a window. Kara’s staring into Lena’s eyes, waiting for that final look of consent when her phone buzzes in her pocket. Loud enough that it feels like it’s directly beside her ear.

Lena closes her eyes in resignation. Takes a step back. Kara closes her own eyes in an attempt to gather herself as she draws it from her pocket. “What’s up, Alex?”

“You were supposed to be over for brunch an hour ago, where are you?” Brunch? But it was…

“I’m-“ Kara opens her eyes. “In my room?”

Alex tuts. “You’ve not even left yet?”

“I’ll be there in five.” Kara shuffles and hits a slightly wet patch in her bed. “Ten. I’ll be ten.”

She makes it there in seven - cheeks flushed; hair slightly astray.

Alex looks at her like she knows exactly what she woke up her from.

Kara refuses to look back.

(She doesn’t need any more guilt).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and it was all a dream. fckin classic


	28. book

Lena remembers her mother reading her a book of old Irish folklores when she was a kid. She remembers the worn copy she’d pull off the shelf every night before bed and the way her mother would tuck her under her arm as she read every word like it was the most important one Lena would ever hear.

She couldn’t remember the exact tone of her mother’s voice anymore. She couldn’t imagine the pitch or the prosody. But, every time she thought of the book, it was like she was right there again in that moment.

She lost the book in the move to the Luthor’s. It hadn’t been one of the things packed for her and she hadn’t been able to spot it on the shelf as she desperately tried to reach for a level she hadn’t quite grown to yet. She remembers the silent tears that stained her cheeks for days.

Lionel had offered to buy her a new one and he’d tried in earnest for a day or two, asked a few of his lackeys to have a look for a copy, but he'd given up when he hadn’t achieved immediate gratification.

Lena told him it was okay, that it wouldn’t have been the same anyway. She hadn’t meant it. She’d have taken whatever she could’ve got for a chance to read the book again in the hopes it would make her remember what her mother sounded like, that it would help her chase that feeling again. That feeling of being warm, and loved, and cherished.

She’d told Kara about it in passing once. Had spoken the long since stored away title when Kara asked her what her favourite book was after scanning excitedly through Lena’s extensive collection.

But now Lena was in Kara’s apartment – framed by the low light of her living room lamp and the smell of the pasta sauce Kara was stirring on the stove. She is in Kara’s apartment when her heart stops in her chest.

“What’s this?” Lena holds up a book. She knows very well what the book is. She can see the title. Can see the cracked spine and the wrapping paper beside. Can see the card that has no words in it yet and Kara’s panicked smile like she’s been caught.

“Your favourite book from when you were a kid?” She asks. Lena notices she flicks the heat off the stove at the same time, settling her focus on Lena. Kara knows very well what it is too. It’s a moot conversation. Lena still can’t get her head around it. “I looked everywhere for it, finally found it in a used bookstore in London. It was supposed to be wrapped.” Lena looks at it. Just stares, breathing shakily and barely managing to stop her bones from crumbling with the force. Like an old wooden shack in a hurricane.

She looks up to find Kara looking like she’s about to rip the plate she’s pulled from the cupboard in two. All fearful eyes like there was any reaction she was going to get from Lena beyond complete and utter adoration. As if Lena could really say anything at all beyond, “I love you.”

The plate cracks. Kara calmly puts the pieces down and rests her hands on the counter to steady herself. “Can you say that again?”

“I love you.”

“You love me?”

“Yes.” Lena wants to say that she thinks about Kara constantly. She wants to say that she hears her name in every synonym for beautiful. She wants to tell her that sometimes she stands on the beach and lets the water hit her toes and she doesn’t think about pain anymore, just the warmth of Kara's hands.

She wants to tell Kara that she’s thought about telling her that she loves her every day for months, that she still loved her in silence long before that. She wants to write a dictionary dedicated to her. She wants to call the church and claim she has proof of an irrefutable miracle right in front of her eyes. She wants to say more. She wants to say everything, but she thinks for now this will have to be enough.

“I love you too,” Kara says.

“I think I knew that,” Lena admits. “Could you say it again though please?”

Kara slowly closes the gap. Her hands gently cup Lena’s cheeks. Her forehead rests against hers. The tip of her nose softly brushes against the bridge of Lena’s and then she kisses her.

And when she pulls back, it’s in the space where Lena begs her lungs to catch their breath that Kara repeats, “I love you.”

_(I love you)_.

(Lena grins).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy belated birthday to everyone who asked if they could kiss on their special day. if it makes you feel better - they didn't kiss on my birthday either, but they're kissing now boiiis


	29. dinner

They’re halfway through a film Kara stopped paying attention to about ten minutes beforehand. Her focus is on the way Lena’s legs are draped over her lap, the feel of her slightly prickly calves under Kara’s palms as she massages them.

She’s just polished off the last of the mound of potstickers Lena brought round with her when she finally voices the thought that's been running around her head. “I want to take you out on a date. A real date. A date where we do all the things we did when we weren’t calling it a date, but this time we’ll call it a date, and I’ll kiss you at the end of it, and the beginning, and also at intermittent points in the middle.”

“Can you kiss me now?” Kara grins. Presses her lips to Lena’s. Lena smiles into it until they’re barely kissing anymore, and Kara leans back. Lena sits with it for a moment, faux considering the request. “Okay, I’ll agree to your terms.”

“You’re so weird,” Kara says fondly. “Tomorrow?”

“And yet you pined after me for years,” Lena teases. “Tomorrow sounds good.”

“I never said I didn’t like weird.”

Lena watches her softly from where she’s relaxed back on the couch. Her eyes a little lidded from the toll of the day and the half empty wine glass sitting on the coffee table. “Where are you taking me on this proper date where I can’t wear sweatpants then?”

“You can wear sweatpants if you’d like.” Personally, she thinks Lena looks expensive in anything. It was in the way she held her shoulders, the richness of her jawline, the power in her eyes even when she was handing all the power over to Kara. Lena could frankly pull anything off. “But maybe you could wear that black dress you wore to your reunion?”

“The night you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself?”

“I was just selling the act like you asked,” Kara argues.

(But also, yes, that night).

“You definitely sold it,” Lena says a little distantly. She looks a little more awake as she looks deeply into Kara’s eyes before she speaks again. “I almost told you that night, you know. You kept looking at me this way, the way you’re looking at me now, and I thought maybe I wasn’t alone, maybe you really did feel the same way.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’ve watched the way you shift out of being Supergirl and slip into Kara Danvers – I didn’t think it would be too much of a stretch to pretend to be in love with me for a night.” Kara knew how to act. She knew it was about posture and body language, she knew it was about the words she used and the way she used them, she knew how to flip a coin and work with whatever side it landed on. But sometimes there wasn’t a coin to flip. Sometimes things just were. Sometimes things just are.

“That’s changing between two parts of myself. No part of me isn’t in love with you.” Kara had tried to distance it before Lena knew. When Lena trusted Kara and started to hide herself away as Supergirl. She tried to convince herself that she didn’t mind, so long as Lena still smiled at her when she wasn’t wearing the cape.

She did mind though. She never longed more than when her symbol was emblazoned on her chest and Lena wouldn’t dare touch her shoulder, or stand a little too close, or smile at her with the same smile she always reserved for Kara – the one she knew now meant _I’m in love with you and I can’t stop looking_.

“Are you trying to convince me to let you cop a feel again? Because if you are it’s definitely working.” Lena quips.

“Oh yeah?” Kara drags her hand up Lena’s thigh, slips them round the back and squeezes her ass, Lena squeaks and laughs.

She swats Kara’s hands away with no real intent. “Okay stop trying to distract me so you can quickly plan this date and pretend you knew what it was all along.”

“I was actually thinking we could go to Noonan’s since it’s the place where you finally gave into my charms and agreed to have lunch with me and then we could go get ice cream from your favourite place in the park – the one with the weird flavours.”

“Green tea ice cream isn’t uncommon, Kara.”

“It’s gross though.” Kara had caved and let Lena talk her into trying it once. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

“You’ll have to refrain from kissing me once I’ve had it then.” Lena points out (rephrase - threatens).

“It’s not that gross.” Kara leans over and kisses her. Lena wiped off her lipstick hours ago. After it had smeared across their mouths and lost all sense of its original place. They’d fallen into a rhythm of kisses now. Moved past the lingering fear of the first few days and the shyness that pushed through the couple weeks after. Now it felt easy. Now it felt both novel and exciting and like they’d been doing it forever.

(Kara really wished they’d been doing it forever,

but she was happy to play catch-up).

“You know we’ve missed half this movie you called a masterpiece,” Lena says when Kara moves back to her original position, rubbing her legs and sees the end of the credits rolling.

“We can watch it next time.”

Lena smiles, looking at her watch. The one Kara gave her. “Speaking of, I better go. I need to get my beauty rest for this big dinner I have tomorrow.”

Kara wants to say stay, wants to wrap herself round Lena like they usually did after nights like this. But their usual existed back when they were still tiptoeing around this whole thing. When they were still ‘friends’. Now they were more and familiar territory felt unfamiliar. Safe offers felt unsafe.

Next time. She told herself. Next time she’d invite her to stay. Instead, for now, she says, “Sounds important.”

“It is,” Lena agrees. “I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“Not possible.”

Their food takes forever to be delivered to their table. They get the wrong order and Kara refuses to send it back. The table leg snaps, the food only barely saved by Kara’s superhuman reflexes. Kara gets a stain on her favourite shirt. The heavens open on them as they walk through the park with their ice cream. For all intents and purposes, the entire date is a disaster.

But green tea doesn’t taste so bad mixed with chocolate.

(It’s the best date Kara’s ever been on in her life).


	30. night

It’s the first time Lena’s staying the night as her girlfriend. Her actual, we’ve had the conversation and decided to call ourselves girlfriends, girlfriend.

Kara’s nervous. Kara’s completely freaked. Even though nothing has really changed but also everything has changed and she’s in love with Lena and Lena’s in love with her and Lena’s going to be in her bed. Her bed where she can kiss Lena if she wants, and touch her, and-

She’s nervous.

They brush their teeth together and she’s nervous. Lena kisses her with minty lips and she’s nervous. Lena changes without thinking of hiding herself and Kara’s still fighting the feeling that she should look away and she’s nervous. Lena’s green eyes pierce across the dark when Kara changes into her own pyjamas and she’s nervous.

And kind of buzzing with excitement.

But also, they climb into bed on their unspoken designated sides and Kara’s nervous.

“Why does this feel oddly weird?” Lena asks into the silence of the night. Kara bursts out laughing until Lena can’t help but join in. “What?” The question comes out between fits of giggles. Kara pulls her into a hug reassuringly as she fends off the last of the laughter in her chest until it settles into a soft rumble below Lena’s head.

“Nothing, I just- I thought it was just me,” she admits. “Alex has been laughing at me all day and teasing me about finally getting you into bed and I just, I started overthinking it.”

“Nia sent me a text earlier with nothing but the smirking face and bed emojis and I’ve pretty much been shaking ever since.”

“Our friends are weird,” Kara decides. She’s right. “Nothing has to happen, you know. And I’m convincing myself as much as you right now. This is just the same as always, except now when I think about kissing your adorable sleepy face, I can actually do it.” Kara punctuates her point by tilting her chin down and presses her lips to Lena’s. Lena sighs contentedly and pushes her lips more fully into Kara’s, adjusting the angle of her head and pushing slightly up on her arms to get a better angle.

“I love you,” she says when she pulls back. Kara grins goofily.

“That’s still insane to hear.” She doesn’t think she’d ever get used to it. The day after Lena said it, Kara text it to her every hour just to have Lena right it back with varying insults like nerd and dork and loser (and all the accompanying pet names like darling, and sweetheart and love. _Love_ ). “I love you too.”

Kara slips her hands under the soft fabric of Lena’s shirt, scratches gently at the skin of her lower back until Lena’s almost purring, pushing her mouth into the skin of Kara’s neck in a content stretch.

“I know you said nothing has to happen, but it also doesn’t have to not happen," Lena reasons. 

“I didn’t think your seduction technique would be double negatives,” Kara jokes.

“And what did you think it would be? Begging you to slap my ass in my office?” Lena throws back and touché but also Kara trusted her with that embarrassing admission, and it had taken about twelve hours for it to be thrown straight back in her face.

(She’s had enough of being the one feeling off balance for one night).

“I was thinking you might pull a move more like this,” Kara says as she takes Lena’s hand in hers and slips it under the waistband of her boxers until Lena’s fingertips graze slick heat.

Lena gasps.

Kara uses the excuse to lick into her mouth. “What do you think? Good move?” She asks teasingly against her lips. Lena hums in quick agreement. Her fingers moving experimentally until Kara bucks into them and suddenly all she can think about is knowing what Lena feels like against her own hands.

They don’t hold much of a conversation for the rest of the night, despite all the words spoken.

Kara ignores all the sexual emoji combinations that are sent in succession on the Super-Friends group chat the next morning- especially the one attached to Lena’s own contact hidden somewhere in the middle of it all.

She’s far too happy to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i... kinda forgot i let this almost go spicy. should probably up the rating for safety purposes


	31. spooky - epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set an undetermined amount of time into the future (as all of them have been really i suppose)

“Your apartment is haunted,” Kara says when they’re chopping up vegetables for dinner, completely out of nowhere - sounding both like she was just casually announcing what she’d done in the day and also like she’d been rehearsing the sentence in her head for at least twenty minutes. Lena immediately sends her an odd look, trying to decipher which one is correct.

“My apartment isn’t haunted, Kara.”

“There’s always a weird breeze blowing through it.”

“I leave the window slightly ajar for you.”

“Sometimes in the middle of the night I hear footsteps right outside your door."

“That’s the nightly security check you begged I have.”

“The other day a picture frame flew off the wall out of nowhere.”

“Kara, you sneezed very harshly one second before it came off.”

“I’ve heard a creepy, disembodied man’s voice in your office.” … Okay Lena will admit that she has heard that one herself. She doesn’t have a great excuse for that. That one could definitely be a ghost – she wouldn’t put it past this universe anymore.

But she wasn't going to let Kara know that. “You have super-hearing; you’re constantly hearing things that seem to have no discernible source from half the city away.”

“I don’t know, Lena, it’s spooky.”

“Literally everything you just pointed out can be easily explained away.”

“I don’t know," Kara says timidly, inhaling deeply before slowly exhaling out, "I think you should move in with me.”

“Kara-“ Lena starts. Freezes. _‘Move in with me’_. Move in with Kara. Live with Kara on a permanent, romantic basis in which they do romantic things. Why couldn’t Lena think in proper sentences? Why couldn’t she say them out loud? She probably should’ve figured out the answer sooner because Kara puts her knife down shakily and starts fiddling with her hands and words.

“You don’t have to move in with me. We could move in together, into a different place,” she offers and then an even harsher sense of panic flies onto her face. “If that’s why you’re being quiet. Obviously if you’re being quiet because you were thinking about breaking up with me and I’m suggesting we take it to another level, then also we don’t have to move in together at all.”

“Yes,” Lena chokes out.

“Yes?” Kara asks. Right, other theories were posed just then. Try again Lena.

“I’d love to live with you,” she says more eloquently. Kara cheers, her grin spreading from ear to ear as she lifts Lena off her feet and spins her round, laughing. She rests her forehead against Lena’s when she settles her back down on her feet.

“You had me terrified for a minute there.”

“My brain froze a bit in excitement. I really would love to live with you though, I like the idea of us finding our own space. Making it _our_ home.” She likes the thought of mixing her books with Kara’s on a shelf and sharing a wardrobe and buying a favourite blanket to fight over but always ultimately end up under together.

She likes the idea of not having to trek across the city to an apartment without Kara in it just to collect mail and show her doorman she’s not dead. She likes the idea of coming home and knowing both Kara and her favourite makeup remover are in the same place without having to wonder if she left it in her own apartment.

She likes it all.

She loves it all.

“You trying to get me into bed with those fancy words, Miss Luthor?” Kara asks, shifting her arms to the backs of Lena’s thighs and lifting her off her feet. Lena wraps her legs securely around her waist.

“Absolutely. Is it working?”

“Absolutely.” They start looking for apartments later that night, the room only illuminated by the light of the laptop and the moon through the window. Kara rests it on the bare skin of her stomach, the sheets tangled at their legs and Lena resting her head on her chest, tilted to the screen, listening to the subtle beat of Kara’s heart under her ear.

She’s never been happier in her life.

(Even if her apartment was haunted.

She’d be out of it soon enough).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has continued to read and comment throughout the month - i know i haven't managed to reply to all comments but they've all meant a lot to me and i think you're all very lovely.
> 
> come hang on tumblr if you want (c--and--b)
> 
> i hope november treats you kindly and happy halloween!!


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